Powerset (company)
Encyclopedia
Powerset is a Microsoft owned company based in San Francisco, California
that, in 2006, was developing a natural language search engine for the Internet
.
Powerset was working on building a natural language
search engine that could find targeted answers to user questions (as opposed to keyword based search). For example, when confronted with a question like "Which U.S.
state has the highest income tax
?", conventional search engines ignore the question phrasing and instead do a search on the keywords
"state", "highest", "income", and "tax". Powerset on the other hand, attempts to use natural language processing to understand the nature of the question and return pages containing the answer.
The company was in the process of "building a natural language search engine that reads and understands every sentence on the Web." The company has licensed natural language technology from PARC, the former Xerox
Palo Alto Research Center.
On May 11, 2008, the company unveiled a tool for searching a fixed subset of Wikipedia
using conversational phrases rather than keywords.
On July 1, 2008, Microsoft
signed an agreement to acquire Powerset for an estimated $100 million.
: "[Powerset Labs] goes far beyond the 'alpha' or 'beta' testing involved in most software projects, when users put a new product through rigorous testing to find its flaws. Powerset doesn’t have a product yet, but rather a collection of promising natural language technologies, which are the fruit of years of research at Xerox PARC."
Powerlabs' initial search results are taken from Wikipedia
.
) is co-founder and CTO of Powerset. Pell received his bachelor of science
degree in symbolic systems from Stanford University
in 1989, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and was a National Merit Scholar. Pell received a Ph.D.
in computer science
from Cambridge University in 1993, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He has worked at NASA
, as chief strategist and vice president of business development at StockMaster.com (acquired by Red Herring
in March, 2000) and at Whizbang! Labs. Prior to joining Powerset, Pell was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Mayfield Fund
, a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley.
Pell is also a founder of Moon Express
, Inc., a U.S. company awarded a $10M commercial lunar contract by NASA and a competitor in the Google Lunar X PRIZE
.
. He left Powerset in October of 2007 to form Virgance, a social startup incubator.
in software engineering from the University of Texas at Austin
.
, former manager of research in Natural Language Theory and Technology at PARC, serves as the company's CSO.
field. The company received $12.5 million in Series A funding during November 2007, co-led by the venture capital firms Foundation Capital
and The Founders Fund
.
Among the better known investors:
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
that, in 2006, was developing a natural language search engine for the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
.
Powerset was working on building a natural language
Natural language
In the philosophy of language, a natural language is any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect. A natural language is typically used for communication, and may be spoken, signed, or written...
search engine that could find targeted answers to user questions (as opposed to keyword based search). For example, when confronted with a question like "Which U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
state has the highest income tax
Income tax
An income tax is a tax levied on the income of individuals or businesses . Various income tax systems exist, with varying degrees of tax incidence. Income taxation can be progressive, proportional, or regressive. When the tax is levied on the income of companies, it is often called a corporate...
?", conventional search engines ignore the question phrasing and instead do a search on the keywords
Keyword (Internet search)
An index term, subject term, subject heading, or descriptor, in information retrieval, is a term that captures the essence of the topic of a document. Index terms make up a controlled vocabulary for use in bibliographic records. They are an integral part of bibliographic control, which is the...
"state", "highest", "income", and "tax". Powerset on the other hand, attempts to use natural language processing to understand the nature of the question and return pages containing the answer.
The company was in the process of "building a natural language search engine that reads and understands every sentence on the Web." The company has licensed natural language technology from PARC, the former Xerox
Xerox
Xerox Corporation is an American multinational document management corporation that produced and sells a range of color and black-and-white printers, multifunction systems, photo copiers, digital production printing presses, and related consulting services and supplies...
Palo Alto Research Center.
On May 11, 2008, the company unveiled a tool for searching a fixed subset of Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
using conversational phrases rather than keywords.
On July 1, 2008, Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
signed an agreement to acquire Powerset for an estimated $100 million.
Powerlabs
In a form of beta testing, Powerset opened an online community called Powerlabs on September 17, 2007. Business Week said, "The company hopes the site will marshal thousands of people to help build and improve its search engine before it goes public next year." Said The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
: "[Powerset Labs] goes far beyond the 'alpha' or 'beta' testing involved in most software projects, when users put a new product through rigorous testing to find its flaws. Powerset doesn’t have a product yet, but rather a collection of promising natural language technologies, which are the fruit of years of research at Xerox PARC."
Powerlabs' initial search results are taken from Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
.
Barney Pell
Barney Pell (born March 18, 1968 in Hollywood, CaliforniaCalifornia
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
) is co-founder and CTO of Powerset. Pell received his bachelor of science
Bachelor of Science
A Bachelor of Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years .-Australia:In Australia, the BSc is a 3 year degree, offered from 1st year on...
degree in symbolic systems from Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
in 1989, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and was a National Merit Scholar. Pell received a Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
from Cambridge University in 1993, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He has worked at NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
, as chief strategist and vice president of business development at StockMaster.com (acquired by Red Herring
Red Herring (magazine)
Red Herring was a technology business magazine, which flourished during the dot com boom, with global distribution and bureaus in Bangalore, Beijing, and Paris. It also sponsored conferences designed to bring venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and technologists together. But the magazine went into...
in March, 2000) and at Whizbang! Labs. Prior to joining Powerset, Pell was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Mayfield Fund
Mayfield Fund
Mayfield Fund is one of the oldest venture capital firms in the US, focusing on early-stage to growth-stage investments in information technology companies with a focus on enterprise software, Internet consumer & media services, and communications....
, a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley.
Pell is also a founder of Moon Express
Moon Express
Moon Express, or MoonEx, is a privately held seed-stage company formed by a group of Silicon Valley and space entrepreneurs, with the goal of winning the Google Lunar X Prize, and ultimately mining the Moon for resources of economic value.-History:...
, Inc., a U.S. company awarded a $10M commercial lunar contract by NASA and a competitor in the Google Lunar X PRIZE
Google Lunar X Prize
The Google Lunar X PRIZE, abbreviated GLXP, sometimes referred to as Moon 2.0, is a space competition organized by the X Prize Foundation, and sponsored by Google. It was announced at the Wired Nextfest on 13 September 2007...
.
Steve Newcomb
Steve Newcomb was the COO and co-founder of Powerset. Prior to joining Powerset, he was a co-founder of Loudfire, General Manager at Promptu, and was on the board of directors at JaxtrJaxtr
Jaxtr is a social communications company that melds together global calling, SMS, and social networking. Founded by Phillip Mobin and Touraj Parang in October 2005, jaxtr uses Voice over Internet Protocol to offer competitive rates as well as free international and long distance calling...
. He left Powerset in October of 2007 to form Virgance, a social startup incubator.
Lorenzo Thione
Lorenzo Thione (born in Como, Italy) is the product architect and co-founder of Powerset. Prior to joining Powerset, he worked at PARC in natural language processing and related research fields. Thione earned his master's degreeMaster's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
in software engineering from the University of Texas at Austin
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
.
Ronald Kaplan
Ronald KaplanRonald Kaplan
Ronald M. Kaplan is Chief Scientist and a Principal Researcher at the Powerset division of Microsoft Bing. He is also a Consulting Professor in the Linguistics Department at Stanford University and a Principal of Stanford's Center for the Study of Language and Information...
, former manager of research in Natural Language Theory and Technology at PARC, serves as the company's CSO.
Investors
Powerset attracted a wide range of investors, many of whom had considerable experience in the venture capitalVenture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
field. The company received $12.5 million in Series A funding during November 2007, co-led by the venture capital firms Foundation Capital
Foundation capital
Foundation Capital is a venture capital firm located in Silicon Valley. The firm was founded in 1995, and manages over $2.4 billion in investment capital. It raised its seventh and largest fund of $750 million in April 2008...
and The Founders Fund
The Founders Fund
Founders Fund is a San Francisco based venture capital firm which invests at all stages in companies with revolutionary technologies. The firm’s six partners, Peter Thiel, Sean Parker, Ken Howery, Luke Nosek, Bruce Gibney, and Brian Singerman have been founders of or early investors in numerous...
.
Among the better known investors:
- Esther DysonEsther DysonEsther Dyson is a former journalist and Wall Street technology analyst who is a leading angel investor, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and commentator focused on breakthrough innovation in healthcare, government transparency, digital technology, biotechnology, and space...
, founding chairman of ICANNICANNThe Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is a non-profit corporation headquartered in Marina del Rey, California, United States, that was created on September 18, 1998, and incorporated on September 30, 1998 to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly...
, founder of the newsletterNewsletterA newsletter is a regularly distributed publication generally about one main topic that is of interest to its subscribers. Newspapers and leaflets are types of newsletters. Additionally, newsletters delivered electronically via email have gained rapid acceptance for the same reasons email in...
Release 1.0 and editor at CnetCNETCNET is a tech media website that publishes news articles, blogs, and podcasts on technology and consumer electronics. Originally founded in 1994 by Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie, it was the flagship brand of CNET Networks and became a brand of CBS Interactive through CNET Networks' acquisition... - Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Andreas Thiel is an American business magnate, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager. With Elon Musk and Max Levchin, Thiel co-founded PayPal and was its CEO...
, founder and former CEO of PayPalPayPalPayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders.... - Luke NosekLuke NosekLuke Nosek is an American entrepreneur of Polish descent.Nosek received a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During college in the summer of 1995, he cofounded SponsorNet New Media, Inc., along with fellow UIUC students Max Levchin and Scott Banister...
, founder of PayPal - Reid HoffmanReid HoffmanReid G. Hoffman is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Hoffman is best known as the co-founder of LinkedIn, a social network used primarily for business connections and job searching.-Early education and career:...
, executive vice president of PayPal and founder of LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a business-related social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. , LinkedIn reports more than 120 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories. The site is available in English, French,... - First Round CapitalFirst Round CapitalFirst Round Capital is a venture capital firm that specializes in providing seed-stage funding to technology companies. Managed by Josh Kopelman, Chris Fralic, Rob Hayes and Howard L. Morgan, the Philadelphia-based company typically provides seed-stage investment that ranges from $250,000 to $500,000...
, seed-stage venture firm
External links
- Powerset main web site - redirects to Bing