Napster Pioneers Announce New Company, AppleSoup

Posted on July 17, 2000

Early Napster founder and investors, Bill Bales and Adrian Scott, have announced the formation of AppleSoup, a peer-to-peer network that lets content owners distribute ``anything digital'' via the Internet. Napster is still under fire from music professionals, companies and musicians who argue Napster allows users to trade copyrighted songs and albums for free.

AppleSoup aims to avoid endangering intellectual property rights by technically assigning rights management rules and procedures to copyrighted content. Like Napster, AppleSoup connects members' hard drives to create a virtual library of content. When a member requests a specific piece of digital content, AppleSoup sends him or her directly to another member's hard drive to retrieve the file. The platform makes a large amount available to the masses, without the scalability issues of the central server model.

``Harnessing the peer-to-peer platform to distribute information over the Internet has enormous potential, as anyone can see from Napster's meteoric user base,'' said Frank Biondi, chairman of Waterview Advisors, LLC. ``The reason the entertainment community has yet to embrace such services has been a fear of copyright infringement. AppleSoup has succeeded in finding a way to offer a depth of content to consumers, without violating anyone's rights or intellectual property.''

AppleSoup also announced the investors who participated in the company's $2.5 million seed round. The group of investors and advisors includes: Bill Krause, president of LWK Ventures; Fred Gibbons, partner, Venture-Concept; Palo Alto Investors; Frank Biondi's Waterview Adivors, LLC; John Valenti, co-founder of Creative Planet; Allen DeBevoise, chairman and CEO of Creative Planet; Brian Pinkerton, inventor of WebCrawler; Yosi Amram, CEO of Valicert; and Kim Polese, CEO of Marimba.

``We've assembled an outstanding team of backers and advisors who believe in what we're accomplishing,'' said Bill Bales, president and CEO of AppleSoup. ``We are fortunate to leverage the expertise of these technology and entertainment leaders. It is a great fit, and one that validates content owners' support for our copyright-friendly approach.''

President and CEO Bill Bales, previously co-founded Quote.com, which was sold to Lycos. He later founded ON24. After ON24, Bales invested in and incubated Napster, serving as its VP of Business Development until December, when he left to co-found AppleSoup with Adrian Scott, AppleSoup chairman and VP of Engineering. AppleSoup is privately held and based in San Francisco, California. AppleSoup has over 30 employees.