Company Envysion Inc.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: [small biz] TECH-STARTUP - Company overview

INITIAL LIGHT BULB: Matt Steinfort worked with venture capitalist Dan Caruso after Caruso bought ICG with Columbia Capital and High Country Ventures, the state of Colorado's investment fund. Caruso introduced Steinfort to another investment opportunity: Envysion, a traditional video surveillance company.

Describing the company at that time--2005--as "stalled," Steinfort recruited a co-worker from his days at Level 3 Communications, Robert Hagens, who helped conceive a soft ware as a service (SaaS) business plan as well as features that would be impossible with tradi tional technology. The same investment group liked the idea and committed $3 million in seed money to the new Envysion in 2006.

"We proceeded to completely reinvent the company," Steinfort said. "At this point in time, there is no one left from the original company."

Steinfort is now president and chief executive officer of the 38-employee company. Hagens is chief technical officer, and Caruso serves as executive chairman.

IN A NUTSHELL: "Envysion is an innovator in Web-based video management," Steinfort said. "We've taken a traditional technology--video surveillance--and we've enabled people to use it in better ways. The problem we're solving is not security. The problem we're solving is profitability."

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A diverse roster of retailers and restaurants--including more than 600 Chipotle locations--Envysion's customers report an average profitability uptick of 1 percent to 2 percent after signing up for the company's services, Steinfort said. The reason for this improved profitability varies from customer to customer, he added, but it is underpinned by Envysion's innovative technology.

"Traditionally in the 1980s, video was confined to a VCR in the back office," Steinfort said. "They basically only used it if there was a robbery." Cut to the 1990s, when digital technology made searches much easier. Then in the current decade, the emergence of broadband and digital video recorders allowed for remote video surveillance via the Web.

But hurdles remained. Steinfort identified user-friendliness and scalability (or lack thereof) as the two top constraints, both of which he touts Envysion as solving. "We take a tremendous amount of the burden off the IT organization," he said. "They simply go to our...