[Small biz] tech startup.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: Pixorial Inc.

COMPANY

PIXORIAL INC.

INITIAL LIGHT BULB: Andres Espineira retired from a tech career in Silicon Valley and moved to Colorado, then sailed across the Atlantic with his father the next year.

"The genesis of the idea (for Pixorial) came over that summer from digitizing Super 8 and 8-millimeter film for my father," Pixorial CEO Espineira says. "Transferring is often a problem for people. I wanted to take this video and put it in the cloud online and give them tools to edit it."

A few years passed before Espineira came out of retirement to launch Pixorial with Vice President of Operations Gina Miccio.

IN A NUTSHELL: "We make old and new video portable and give you the tools to put it anywhere," Espineira says.

Users can either upload video files at Pixorial.com or request a shipping kit to mail old reels and tapes in most every major legacy format for Pixorial staff to digitize into their libraries, which are stored on enterprise-class Hitachi hardware at the highest resolution possible.

After digitizing content, users can log in and edit it using Pixorial's online tools. "It's aimed at people who have no video editing experience at all," Espineira says. "It has about 70 to 80 percent of the functionality of a heavy-duty video editor." After editing, users can easily port the finished product to YouTube, Facebook, or other online outlets, or order a DVD.

"It is one of the only sites where you can create a video, edit a video, store a video, share a video, or create a DVD," says Melissa Hourigan, vice president of marketing. "We don't limit how or with whom you can share. We don't want to change those social interactions."

Pixorial also has a pair of Facebook apps to allow users to share video on the omnipresent social network. Espineira says apps for the iPhone and Android are also in the works.

Now 14 employees strong, Pixorial has a...