Twin Prime, a startup that claims to be able to accelerate content delivery on the last mile of cellular networks, pulled out of stealth mode with a $9.5 million round of funding.
The company is not claiming to solve the well-known latency problems on wireless networks. Instead, Twin Prime has developed a technique based on a relatively new mathematical modeling process it claims can compensate for latency on wireless networks, both cellular and Wi-Fi.
The company cites statistics that indicate that every 100 millisecond delay on a wireless network can equate to another 1 percent drop in revenue, as impatient customers become increasingly more likely to drop a session the longer they have to wait.
Since the market for data delivered over wireless networks runs into the billions of dollars, latency can cost companies significant amounts of (potential) revenue.
Which explains the enthusiasm of some investors. The leads on Twin Prime’s Series A round were DFJ and True Ventures, with participation from Milliways Ventures and Moment Ventures.
True Ventures is certainly more famous than Twin Prime. Its partners include Om Malik, founder of the recently-shuttered GigaOm web site. Malik and Bubba Murarka, partner at DFJ, will join Twin Prime’s board of directors.
The founder and CEO of the company is Kartik Chandrayana, whose CV includes stints at Bell Labs, Cisco Systems, and Blue Coat Systems.
Twin Prime calls its technology Global Location based Acceleration Strategies, or GLAS. The software system relies on automated hypothesis testing, a modeling technique developed at the turn of the century, whereby any number of variables can be evaluated for to arrive at an optimal approach for how to proceed in a process – in this case delivering content. Patents on the technique refer to this as “goodness-of-fit calculations.”
Twin Prime’s system operates in real time to automate the “selection and deployment of optimization strategies customized for specific mobile network characteristics and operating conditions including device, application architecture, network type, quality and location.”
The company said it will use the funds for product development efforts and for commercializing the technology.
Other attempts to solve latency problems in networks involve caching. Twin Prime says its technology complements CDN and caching approaches.
The company has some real-world experience with its approach. “Speed is critically important for any social media app, as the majority of our content is visual in nature,” said Frédéric della Faille, CEO of Frontback, a leading photo sharing app with a global presence. “Twin Prime solved the mobile performance problem for us globally. It’s amazing how something so quick and easy to install delivers such significant benefits.”
