1. What exactly is HomePipe; how did it all begin?

HomePipe is a service that allows people to have access to all of their home or work content, without having to give the content away by replicating or syncing their content to the cloud.  It provides the feel of having all your content local from any mobile device/phone or via any web browser, all securely using SSL and 100% private.

Kiddingly, I tell people HomePipe began because I did not want to ever have to e-mail my mother-in-law another photo of my kids just so she could have prints made!  We all are tired of sitting in front of photo uploaders that always failed, also we didn’t want to force people to register at every photo publishing site in order to access private photos.  Finally, we also wanted any work documents, my home music, and all my videos all of the time no matter where I was.

2. Tell us something about Parvez Anandam; how did you two get together and co-founded HomePipe?

I co-founded a company call Aventail which pioneered SSL VPN’s in 1996 that continues to be used and copied by competitors to this day.  We hired Parvez from another bay area SSL VPN company and he moved up to Seattle, and we worked together on various projects at Aventail for many years.  Parvez and I founded HomePipe based on a common vision around a hybrid cloud services for consumers.

3. Can you tell us a little more about the technology working behind HomePipe?

Well, we have native code for Apple iPhones, Google Android, and more mobile device platforms coming soon.  We leverage the WebDAV protocol over SSL for its open standards for accessing all content in the home, with some HomePipe specific optimizations and intelligent content caching everywhere.  We operate our services on a hybrid of both Microsoft.net and Open Source platform technologies.  While the technology matters a lot to us, we know consumers and our users don’t care, so we make platform decisions that allow us to provide the best experience for our customers and are not into any real techno-religous bent per se.

4. HomePipe is different from Box.net, DropBox, Xdrive etc, who do you think is your closest competitor; what do you think is your USP?

Well, we plan on some of those being strong partners going forward, so they definitely are not competitors in our mind today.  We are unique in that we enable unlimited amounts of content to be accessible anywhere, anytime safely and securely for your personal consumption or for your private personal sharing of that content with no copying or replicating of content required.  Also, all of your remote content appears as if it were local, which is huge for useability.  Finally, our platform’s ability to stream audio and video content specifically to devices or the web is something that is outside the scope of most horizontal cloud storage vendors.

5. HomePipe lets any one access files on their home computer, only when it is online. Do you think this is actually a down side, when compared to other services that store your files in the cloud?

Is it a downside that cloud storage is so expensive and your Gigs and Terabytes of home storage you already own is so cheap?  Most of our subscribers say this:  “I never had a good reason to leave my PC on or change the times when it went to sleep, now with HomePipe I do have a good reason, and I have changed my sleep setting so I can use it with HomePipe.  So for now, it has not been an issue and it has never been an issue for other Desktop Access Services like GoToMyPC and LogMeIn, so if the value is there, that is not a big issue for most people to get over.  Additionally, many new home computers are much more energy efficient and the hardware companies continue to innovate aggressively around power management features, so that is getting better as well.

6. HomePipe recently launched media streaming capability for the Android app, was this a planned step or it was based on customer/user feedback? According to you, how important is customer feedback when upgrading to new features?

Everything for us is measured in two simple ways: “Users and Usage”

We are not the JD Power & Associates award winning customer service organization yet but all of us do our share of customer support and drive that feedback back into our service offerings.

7. Presently, HomePipe is offering a free service to its users. How do you think you’ll be able to derive revenue out of it?

We will derive revenue in 3 basic ways: Advertising in the Free Service, App Revenue for High Value Platforms, and Service Revenue for Premium Capabilities and Services.  Also there are many indirect channels who want to sell our services and we are in discussions for others to sell this into their existing service markets as a new offering.

8. As per its CrunchBase profile, HomePipe received $215K in Debt Funding; do you see it as a better option when compared to angel investment or venture capital?

It was the best vehicle at the time to get the company launched, and it has not inhibited any investment discussions.  We are lean, and will continue to be lean and be very opportunistic with any future capital we take on. I think it is true that much of the Angel investing is changing very quickly and traditional means of accessing capital are no longer exclusive.

9. You are among the pioneers in the IT service provider sector, but HomePipe is a product, what, according to you, are the major differences in running a service-oriented business and one that is product based?

HomePipe is a combination of software and unique technology we package primarily as a service.  We will always have a compelling free service offering and if someone uses us regularly then we will have a premium offering for a nominal annual fee they can pay for and get priority support and service capabilities.  Additionally, if there are significant value-add devices, we will build and sell versions of our apps on those platforms and charge a one-time use fee in addition to the service fee.

10. What was the biggest challenge that you faced while working on HomePipe, and how did you overcome it?

So far, is has been raising seed money in 2009 given the financial conditions to get HomePipe off the ground.  Never give up.  Work hard every day and don’t look down!  Or in today’s financial times equivalent of “don’t look down”, just “don’t look at the Dow”!

11. Last but not the least, do you have any advice for young and aspiring entrepreneurs who want to have their own successful startup?

Find value and prove it.  Build your personal network constantly.  Listen well always. Prepare to give up a big chunk of your life to make it happen.