Grapeshot is a software technology company using advanced Information Retrieval techniques pioneered at Cambridge University

Science

Our founder and lead scientist, Dr. Martin Porter, is one of the 'founding fathers' of probabilistic search as we understand it today. We use advanced probabilistic algorithms to assess the relative significance of keywords in pages, and what users read. The Grapeshot engineering team has been at the cutting edge of information retrieval and search technology for over 30 years.

Dr. Porter is world famous for his "Porter Stemmer" now taught in many Computer Science university degree courses, and used in every major search engine platform including Microsoft Bing and Google. Type in "Porter Stemmer" into Google to see his pedigree and references.

Dr. Porter has used small, efficient, scalable algorithms to power word extraction, real-time categorisation and advanced search methods. These are the technology advantages Grapeshot exploits to make millisecond fast categorisations in real-time to decide which advertising, e-commerce and content recommendations to make, on each and every page impression.

Board

Tim Schoonmaker, Chairman

Tim Schoonmaker manages a portfolio of public company investments, and is an early stage Grapeshot investor. He was at Emap plc from 1983 until 2004; where he was CEO of Emap Performance, including the group's radio and music TV interests, pioneering cross-media brand creation through digital platforms, and the Chairman of EMAP Advertising. Thereafter, he was CEO of Odeon Cinemas Ltd, where he led the business through an exit successful for investors, and also served as the media industry partner of mid-market private equity fund DLJ Merchant Banking Partners. He holds an MBA from the London Business School and a BA from Dartmouth College.

Max Bautin, Partner, IQ Capital

Max has invested in over 30 high-technology companies - including DanioLabs (Summit), Novacta, Phonetic Arts (Google), Revieworld, Quotient (EKF), Veebeam and Transversal - and currently sits on the boards of Grapeshot, Moviestorm, OnRelay and Power Challenge. He started his career in Millicom and then Metrosvyaz, both private equity players investing in mobile telecoms companies in Eastern Europe and other developing countries. He holds a BSc in Economics from the University of Maryland and an MBA from the University of Cambridge.

John Snyder, CEO, Grapeshot

In 1992 John co-founded Muscat with Dr. Martin Porter and led its profitable commercial growth to a successful trade exit in 1997. From 2001, he has led Business Creation at the Cambridge Entrepreneurship Centre, chaired the 5th Cambridge Enterprise Conference, co-founded Library House, Cambridge Angels, and Enterprise Accelerator, and served on the board of the East of England Development Agency for five years until 2008. John holds a Honours degree from the University of Cambridge, where he remains "Entrepreneur in Residence".

Dr. Martin Porter, Chief Scientist, Grapeshot

Martin has devoted his working life to the implementation of Information Retrieval (IR) systems, in particular, probabilistic models. He studied at Cambridge University, achieving a distinction in the Diploma in Computer Science, and took a PhD supervised by Karen Sparck Jones. His original stemming algorithm ("An algorithm for suffix stripping" Program,14,3) has become one of the most frequently cited papers in Information Retrieval research. In 2000, he won the Strix Award "for outstanding contribution to the field of information retrieval".

History

Grapeshot founders successfully built the Muscat software business up from 1992 developing internet and intranet search technology solutions for BBC, Virgin.Net, Shell, Nokia, NASA, Telegraph, Greenpeace, Sun Microsystems, and 100 other corporations, before selling the company in 1997.

Muscat technology was subsequently used to build one of the first large search indexes of the internet. In 1999 the Muscat team were neck-and-neck with Google, with each team indexing over twice the number of web pages as Alta-Vista. Although the core Muscat code was engineered by Dr. Porter in 1984, it is still used to power the Yell.com search today.

The Grapeshot founders resigned from their aquiror company in 2001, and started work on creating fresh new code that could surpass the Muscat technology platform, and deliver real-time classification and content recommendations. In 2006 the new code was road-tested first with Verisign Inc, using Grapeshot to index over 100 million websites, as well as suggest domain names for domain registrars. Verisign continues to licence the core Grapeshot platform today.

In 2007 Grapeshot worked with both Reuters and IBM to create personalised content experiences using a web services architecture; before moving to online advertising in 2008 to recommend relevant advertorials on niche B2B sites owned by Incisive Media.

By 2009 the company scaled up its new webservice operations to populate the content recommendations for Virgin Media's Entertainment assets - TV, Movies and Film - whilst delivering targeted contextual advertising using real-time key-value pairs inside existing DoubleClick and Adtech adserver platforms.

Today Grapeshot has a large share of the UK publisher market helping Mail Online, IPC Media, Johnston Press, Trinity Mirror, Future Publishing, Incisive Media and other content owners to segment their inventory into virtual premium and unique channels.

Most recently Grapeshot has linked to RTB (Real-Time-Bidding) platforms such as Admeld and Rubicon to help buyers in real-time assess the value of a bid based on the context of the page or user, thereby using context to reduce wastage and improve campaign performance.