GigaOM’s Janko Roettgers has been dogged about trying to discover the raison d’etre behind stealth start-up Black Pearl Systems, and now, six months after first revealing the company’s existence, Roettgers is finally able to give us details on what exactly the company aims to do. Black Pearl has launched its new consumer brand name, Lyve Minds, and plans to introduce a product called LyveHome next spring that lets users share and back up their personal media across a variety of devices and apps.
The big deal with Black Pearl, er Lyve Minds, is the management team behind it. The CEO and co-founder Tim Bucher used to be head of engineering for Apple, and the rest of his team brings in experience from companies including Netflix, Danger, YouTube, Microsoft, TiVo, Roku, and Amazon. Interestingly, I discovered separately that co-founder and Content CTO Scott Smyers left the company in October, and has now moved on to a VP role at the audio company DTS. It seems odd that one of the co-founders would abandon the pirate ship before launch. Perhaps a management disagreement? Or maybe something far less interesting, like logistics or start-up fatigue.
In the meantime, here’s what we know about the LyveHome product:
- It includes a LyveHome device offering consumers storage space for video and “millions of photos”
- Users can add storage by adding LyveHome units
- The product includes dedicated mobile apps
- LyveHome initially supports iOS, Android, Windows and Mac OS, with more platforms in the works
That’s about it for now, but Lyve plans to show off its new device at CES next month. To Vegas we go.