Article Quotations

Below find the periodicals and articles in which we have been quoted.

April 27,2001

Boston Business Journal Tech Biz Supplement Cover Story:  
Survivor: The Tech Setback 
by Linda Goodspeed

page 8: ... 

"The VC community, and the financial community beyond that, is dominated by males, and more than that by financially successful males and technologically savvy males," said Todd Burger president and CEO of Chameleon Network Inc. of Waltham, makers of a "digital wallet", a kind of fingerprint enabled "smart card" for everyday retail and e-tail transactions.  "Our product is not geared to them.  It's geared to homemakers, women, consumer spenders.  Things have been put out there for their use, but they're techno gadgets which this market has a strong aversion to.  They're not simple to use."

Chameleon Network, which was started by Burger and seven others in March 2000, has raised about $750,000 and expects to deliver its first digital wallet within 12 months.

"Various smart cards have been tried before without a lot of success," Burger said.  "We've paid a lot of attention to the consumer interface.  It would be easier to raise money if your device was targeted at the VC community, but you'd also be facing a much smaller market.  You have to understand who the real target market is and be willing to sit front of a funding source and say, 'You're not the audience.' " ...

...
Rob Cohen, director of software development at Chameleon Network in Lexington, is feeling the crunch. His company is developing a magnetic card that could replace all of the cards someone might otherwise carry in a wallet.

Over the past few months, he and his colleagues been pressing the flesh at networking events and talking to venture capitalists about first-round funding.

“It’s definitely slow,” Cohen said. “People are being very deliberate about what they fund. Money they may have earmarked for early investments, they’re holding onto because their existing companies may need it now. VCs are hunkering down.”

William Seifert, general partner at Prism Venture Partners, agrees that VCs are slowing down and taking a closer look at deals than they were last year. ...

Mass High Tech Article 4/9/01