History of Kyield
Kyield emerged in stages from a small private lab and incubator founded by Mark Montgomery in 1995, which was spun off from a consulting firm. Originally known for e-commerce, the lab became increasingly focused on advanced technology with a specific focus on knowledge systems (KS); an umbrella overlapping search, business intelligence, analytics, predictive applications, semantics, human performance systems, digital economics and elements of robotics.
The late Dr. Russell E. Borland became a minority investor in the incubator in 1997 before retiring from Microsoft. Russell Borland was on the founding teams of MS Word and Office, playing a key role in the early products that still deliver most of the profit at MS three decades later. During the daily operations and testing in the computer lab, Montgomery developed the theory ‘yield management of knowledge’, and began working on technology necessary to execute and realize the theory. The trade craft took shape over time, the name Kyield was selected in 2002, which is the same year Montgomery founded Initium Venture Capital. Dr. Borland was a special limited partner in Initium.
The underlying technical data standards and scale techniques required patience to mature sufficiently for the theory to become achievable. The structured data standards for the public are commonly known as the Semantic Web. The core patent application was filed in early 2006. In early 2008, Montgomery and his wife relocated to the Bay area in discussions with venture firms that included mergers and substantial funding for Kyield. Simultaneous discussions were held with a software market leader to adopt the Kyield IP across multiple product lines, which continued throughout most of 2008.
Montgomery pulled out of VC merger talks in late 2008 due to liquidity issues discovered during the financial crisis that raised questions about sustainability of the partner model. In 2009 Montgomery relocated with his wife Betsy to Santa Fe, NM, continuing to work on the Kyield technology, product development, business development, and prosecution of the IP. Discussions were held during most of 2009 with a second software market leader on the Kyield IP. In 2010, a serious attempt was made to partner with a third market leading software company. It became apparent and was admitted that resistance to cannibalizing aging business models in the ecosystem was causing internal problems. Protectionism was preventing progress.
Since relocation to NM, tens of thousands of organizations have downloaded Kyield white papers and use case scenarios, representing all sectors of the economy in every type of organization. Many discussions have been held direct with customers, analysts and consulting firms, revealing broad and deep interest in Kyield. During 2011 the viability of Kyield enterprise became apparent as technical hurdles in scale and ease of use matured sufficiently to execute in near-real time. Adoption of semantics increased in the consumer Web and crossed into all remaining areas of the enterprise, and the DoD mandated system-wide conversion to semantics and issued an RFI. After nearly 6 years since original application, Montgomery’s core patent was awarded on 8/23/2011 (#8005778).
In late 2011 Kyield executed a CTO search with strong response. We then followed with a call for collaborative customers in the enterprise prototype with several large organizations responding. In early 2012 Kyield was named in the Forrester report: Future of BI: Top Ten Business Intelligence Predictions for 2012. In February of 2012, Kyield announced a pilot program for its enterprise system which extends advanced analytics to the entire information workplace. Several large organizations are currently exploring the Kyield system and pilot program.
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