It’s only been around for just over a year but this week San Mateo, California based start-up, PointBase is relaunching itself for the third time. The reason? According to spokesperson Art Monk, every time the database vendor chooses a name it finds out another firm has already got in there first and registered it. Monk said the software company started out as DataBean back in January 1998 but six months later it received a letter from another company with the same name and was forced to rename itself, to DataBahn. Then, just as it was about to receive its trade mark registration, the company received yet another letter, this time from the travel software firm, Sabre, who said it had just launched a new product with the same name. So there we were, back at square one again, Monk said, there was nothing we didn’t know about company registration.
Twice bitten, Monk said the firm practically searched the planet before settling on its next name; PointBase, and so far there have been no requests to change it. The company used its formal relaunch this week to announce a new, multi-user version of its Java database. A single user version, designed for desktop and laptop PCs, was released last year but this is the first time the company has offered a multi-user product. Monk said the database has a footprint of just 270 kilobytes, which when fully configured, expands to 750 kilobytes. It’s designed to support e- commerce, web-based mobile applications and a range of internet appliances, PDAs and set-top boxes.
The company currently says it has around 25 customers using its single-user database but with the market for Java-based databases currently at $400m a year and growing at 40%, Monk predicts a rosy future for PointBase. We’re off to create a great company, he said. The privately-held PointBase got its first round of funding, worth $1.9m, from DataMirror Corp and that same company contributed to its second round, where it secured $3.6m, alongside the venture capital firms Aspen Ventures and AVI Partners. Although it’s not profitable yet, Monk said the company hopes to enter the black some time next year, having secured its third round of funding within the next five to six months.
