As it prepares to roll out its collaboration software, Tabture has already received investment commitments totaling $100,000 from Mariner Partners Chairman Gerry Pond and the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation.
The commitments are part of a $250,000 seed round that CEO Frank Lessard is raising to complete closed beta-tests on and develop new tools for the software, which revolutionizes link-sharing.
Lessard had the most succinct of the 10 presentations at PropelICT’s Launch36 Demo Day this week, efficiently explaining that he has developed technology that doesn’t exist elsewhere and is focused on the consumer market.
Fredericton-based Tabture allows greater flexibility and ease of use in sharing links from the Internet. Lessard explained that link-sharing now is a cumbersome process, requiring the user to use social media or to cut and paste a url into an email. And important links can get lost if a recipient is someone who receives 200 or 300 emails a day.
“Tabture provides not only instant link-sharing but also features you can’t get anywhere else,” said Lessard in an interview this week.
Tabture changes the process, allowing the user to identify the friends and colleagues he wants to share a link with, regardless of what operating system they are using. The collaborative uses extend beyond simply letting participants leave comments, which Lessard says eventually resembles a Twitter conversation.
Lessard is working on a system that will let the user highlight important passages on a web posting, and include a margin note on why that section is important. What’s more, a Tabture message can tell the readers why the link is important before they even open it.
In introducing Lessard at Demo Day, PropelICT Executive Director Trevor MacAusland said he didn’t catch on to Tabture immediately when he first heard of it, but soon came to appreciate Lessard’s “`technological brilliance”. Lessard, a graduate of engineering from University of New Brunswick, admitted there are challenges in explaining his product. “It’s hard to explain a pain when people don’t realize that any exists,” he said.
He plans to soft-launch Tabture in the next few weeks and expose it to people who can understand the potential of the system. Then he hopes it spreads by word of mouth as the existing users bring more and more people into their network. He added that in the next year, he hopes to develop new tools for Tabture so it improves as it gains acceptance.
Editor's Note: This is the third of several articles on the companies that presented the Launch36 Demo Day hosted by Propel ICT in Moncton on June 26.
