David Goldberg went to Boulder Labs four years ago with an idea for a software program that would group together photos of vacationers, such as cruise-ship guests, so they could easily find and purchase their pictures at trip’s end.
Instead of charging the serial entrepreneur a typical rate, the Niwot-based software development company lowered its price and took an equity stake in his idea.
“By working with them, we were able to get some development done on a much more reasonable budget,” said Goldberg, 54. “They stuck with us for years as we went from prototype to demonstration project to actual deployment on cruise ships.”
The software is currently used by various cruise lines and is featured in Royal Caribbean International’s Oasis of the Seas, the new cruise ship billed as the largest and most technologically advanced in the world.
Launched a dozen years ago, Boulder Labs is becoming a center for cutting-edge technologies. Though it works primarily with inventors, scientists and entrepreneurs, the company recently won a $750,000 contract from the U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to study “cold atom” technology with researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Cold atoms could ultimately be used in super-high-precision clocks and accelerometers.
“We specialize in things that haven’t been done before,” said founder Robert Gray, 55.
Boulder Labs developed the software for Boulder Amplifiers’ 1021 Disc Player, a $24,000 CD player that produces ultra-high-quality sound.
The company is currently working with Goldberg on another invention: technology that could determine the tenderness of beef early in the meat-packing process.
“The fundamental idea is if you can categorize whether a carcass is tender or tough, the market will pay quite a premium per pound on that carcass,” Gray said.
He said Boulder Labs usually charges inventors a flat rate, but the company has taken an equity stake in the beef-tenderness idea.
The company has nine employees, including eight software developers, and rakes in $1.25 million in revenue annually. The only equity stake that’s paying off right now is the cruise-ship software, called YouFinder.
The software uses facial recognition and algorithms that factor when and where photos were taken to group them together.
Cayman Islands-based Image, a photography concessionaire for the likes of Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line, licenses YouFinder and is using it on more than 10 cruise ships, said Brynley Davies, managing director of Image.
“One of the key problems we had was being able to link guests to their photos, and YouFinder has allowed us to do that in a way that doesn’t disturb the guests,” Davies said. “It’s been a very successful product.”
Andy Vuong: 303-954-1209 or avuong@denverpost.com
