Tech industry veterans join board of online start-up PutPlace

TWO TECHNOLOGY industry veterans have joined the board of Dublin-based online backup and publishing services start-up PutPlace, which has now raised more than €1 million in venture funding.

PutPlace is an online "digital lifetime" management service, that runs in the background to organise, back-up and share content as the user specifies. PutPlace enables computer users to track where their content is located on the web and across a range of devices such as mobiles, computers and handhelds, and manage it through a single browser-based dashboard. It automatically backs up all content to the web in real time.

Former Seagate executive and angel investor Pat Lynch and former Oracle Ireland executive Michael O'Callaghan have joined the board, with Mr O'Callaghan stepping into the chairman's role.

The majority of PutPlace's total funding was raised in the last six months through investors brought in by Mr Lynch, according to PutPlace chief executive and founder Joe Drumgoole, who has fronted engineering operators for CR2, Cape Clear Software and Oracle Ireland.

The current funding round was a co-investment between new investors and Enterprise Ireland, which has a previous investment in the company.

"Pat and Michael come with a wealth of experience, so we now have a very strong board. We will be looking to add a CEO in the near future to grow the company to the next level," said Mr Drumgoole, who will then step into a full-time technologist role with his company.

Existing PutPlace board members include Brian Caulfield, venture capital investor and co-founder of Exceptis (sold to Trintech), Similarity Systems and Prediction Dynamics. Senior management includes Katherine Lucey, formerly with Steeltrace and the Irish Software Association.

Mr Drumgoole stressed that the service is not a social networking offering, but enables users to manage their content on such services, including photo sharing sites and profile sites.

"We don't want to be a storage provider. We don't want to be a sharing site," Mr Drumgoole said. PutPlace doesn't store or manage data for users, but instead enables them to manage and track it themselves, and store it to Amazon's online storage service.

"Right now, people's digital property is scattered and hard to keep track of. What people need is a tool to understand where their stuff is, from the content on the PC they own now, to the PC they'll own in the future, as well as the content they put out on the web."