Former Homestore CEO Stuart Wolff and his former senior vice president of product strategy, Michael Karon have registered the domain for a new company, Scinovate.com. The company plans to apply scientific principles to the study of products to assess their feasibility in the marketplace, presumably so that investors can back a sure thing, or that manufacturers can run what-if tests before launching a potentially unsuccessful product.

In this exclusive interview with Agent News publisher Blanche Evans, Karon tells about leaving Homestore and what his new company will be like. (Dr. Wolff declined to return calls.)

B.E.: What is Scinovate.com?

M.K.: It's a company that was born out of an idea that was largely Stuart Wolff's - a better way to figure out what the next big thing is going to be. Both he and I have experiences thinking about that question, and we thought it would be interesting to apply scientific principles to finding out.

B.E.: So what does it mean? It sounds like it could be everything from an incubator company to a manufacturer.

M.K.: It means science and innovation. That's what we thought -- that the possibilities are wide open. We spent the time getting started in February exploring what the initial opportunities are that look promising. We are starting to put those plans together, and we will have real products that could take a variety of forms. Most will involve technology like software. It's a matter of identifying which ones are the most promising.

B.E.: Are you taking other people's ideas and bringing them to market?

M.K.: No, we are applying science to the evaluation of new ideas, a scientific method and some actual science like mathematics, algorithms. The only thing I can say is we don't plan to be a consultant.

B.E.: For readers who may have been out of school a while, what is the scientific method?

M.K.: You start with observations about the world, and start to generalize certain truths that can be reproduced experimentally. You can break down problems and reproduce results and see patterns and truths emerge about the nature of the world.

B.E.: So it is a more exacting method to arrive at product feasibility.

M.K.: That's fair.

B.E.: Which verticals do you want to serve?

M.K.: We are focusing on the process rather than the specific vertical, there may or may not be certain verticals where we are applying certain techniques but we haven't reached any conclusions.

B.E.: When will you have something more concrete to share with our readers?

M.K.: Over the course of the summer we'll be nailing this down. There are so many possibilities, the real challenge is picking what makes the most sense. I'd say the next couple of months.

B.E.: At Homestore, your position was senior VP of product strategy. How did it feel to come into a new job with so much promise and watch it come tumbling down?

M.K.: I was in product development, I've been developing technology products for 20 years. I'm a software guy. I was at Homestore 15 months. I look at it as past history, and it was unfortunate. In some ways, we were making some real strides, but it didn't turn it out the way I'd hoped.

B.E.: You were there long enough to make an impression on the CEO.

M.K.: I made an impression on the CEO partly because our backgrounds are similar, and he was the one who attracted me to Homestore.com.

B.E.: Are you planning to take this company public?

M.K.: It's too early to tell. I don't have a lot more to add. We are both excited about this thing, and we'll have more to say. There's no big deep dark secret. We are taking our time to plot the best strategy.

Published: May 8, 2002

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