Reel Two wins $1m deal with Gene Ed

5:00 pm - By ADAM GIFFORD

Hamilton data-mining software company Reel Two has signed a three year deal worth more than $1 million with Gene Ed, a leading United States provider of electronic courses in life sciences.

Michael Faust, Reel Two's San Francisco-based chief executive, said Gene Ed creates courses for companies like Glaxo Smith-Kline, Pfizer and Astra Zeneca.

"They might make a course on heart disease to be given sales people at Pfizer who are trying to sell a new heart drug," Mr Faust said.

"Gene Ed will use our KEA predictive engine internally to help handle increased customer flow, and it will also resell pharmaceutical and bio-specific data mining solutions it to its customers."

He said by using Reel Two's Kea technology to analyse their data, drug companies can bring down the time and cost of developing new drugs and bringing them to market.

"Reel Two has developed proprietary algorithms which can very quickly analyse and predict data whether it is structured data or unstructured data such as text.

"Rather than build a generic application, we have tried to identify areas with information overload where the client recognises there is value in turning that data into knowledge and has the money to throw at it," Mr Faust said.

"That's why we have targeted the life sciences and pharmaceuticals industries."

Mr Faust said life sciences is a hard area to break into, and Gene Ed already has the connections Reel Two needs.

Power generation is another area Reel Two believes its data mining tools can provide significant competitive advantages.

Seven of Reel Two's 10 staff were involved in Waikato University's world leading research into machine learning and information technology, and six have doctorates from the university.

They all previously worked for a United States firm called Webmind, which attempted to develop artificial intelligence products.

"The machine learning group at Waikato University is up there with Carnegie Mellon and Amherst as the top of that field in the world," Mr Faust said.

"When we decided to start this company I was impressed by the academic background of these guys plus the pragmatic, innovative approach they take down here.

"That's important when we don't have the sort of resources our competitors have to throw at these problems, and we needed to get a real product developed as quickly as possible."

Reel Two is funded by an angel investor in the United States, staff contributions and bootstrapping initial sales.

Mr Faust said after a year in operation it expect to make an operating profit in the next quarter.

"We might have picked the toughest time to start a technology company but we have a strong product," he said.

Reel Two

Gene Ed