Tech startup of the month.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: Cflix

sity (Goldberg's alma mater), making it the first college campus with such a service. Fall 2002 also saw the launch of pilot programs at Wake Forest University and the University of Colorado at Boulder. At press time, the latter was brainstorming" through logistical issues to offer the service to its on-campus students in early 2003, said Robert Dixon, CU-Boulder's assistant director of housing.

THE PIRACY FACTOR: Goldberg and Comstock both see digital pirates, not established cable providers, as Cflix's prime competitors. "The dorm rooms are not set up for digital cable, and that's an expensive proposition," said Comstock. "We don't really see (cable providers) coming into this space anytime soon, if at all."

Pirates, however, already rule the roost. As of early 2002, the Motion Picture Association of America pegged the number of pirated feature-length downloads at 500000 a day. As usual, college campuses are hotbeds, and Hollywood has even taken to litigation against a few offending students in recent months.

According to CU-Boulder's Dixon, Cflix represents more a means to thwart piracy than generate revenue. "We're not interested in making money off this," he said. "It will begin to provide a legal path to use for watching movies and listening to music instead of the pirated situation we have now. When you can provide a movie at $3.99, it becomes a lot less attractive to steal it."

Piracy aside, Dixon said that the current pian at CU-Boulder is to move its Cflix revenues into educational media--i.e. documentaries and alcohol awareness videos. Likewise, Cflix is planning to offer educational media by year-end 2003.

THE MARKET: In the U.S., there are about 8 million college students living on campus. "It's a great early-adopter demographic," said Comstock. "And the ergonomics of the dorm room are really good for this typ of service. It's not like the television is two rooms away (from the computer) ... it's just a short cable away."

At Duke, Cflix garnered 500 subscribers in its first three months of operations, working from a base of 3,000 on-campus students. CU-Boulder has about 7,000 on-campus students. Cflix's goal for 2003 is to have five to 10 schools online by year's end, in line with projections for profitability by the end of 2004.

FINANCING: The privately held Cflix's startup was financed by angel...