seevl

Seevl provides new ways to explore the cultural and musical universe of your favorite artists, and lets you discover new ones by understanding how they are connected. We offer a new and unique music discovery user-experience, whether it is by browsing artists themselves, labels, genres, and more - or by combining these criteria together. Last but not least, and since we love data as much as music, we let you access our data so that you can build application that rock on top of it.

To enable this, we integrate multiple data sources from the Web to build a giant graph of interlinked entities (artists, genres, topics, locations, etc.) on top of which browsing and explanatory discovery services are provided. To be more precise, the platform is entirely build on Semantic Web and Linked Data technologies. 

Seevl is a spin-out of the Digital Enterprise Research Institute at the National University of Ireland, Galway. The Digital Enterprise Research Institute is the world's largest Research Institute working on Semantic Web technologies, and the company brings together several years of R&D on the Semantic Web, Linked Data and Web Science. The company is an outcome of the Lion2 project funded by Science Foundation Ireland.

Management team

Dr. Alexandre Passant. Founder, CEO / CTO

Alexandre has more than 10 years of experience in Web technologies, from R&D positions to team and project management (both in industry and academia), leading research funded by industry partners such as Cisco or Google. He holds a Ph.D in Semantic Web technologies for Enterprise 2.0 and is also a Research Fellow at the Digital Enterprise Research Institute and Adjunct Lecturer at National University of Ireland, Galway, regularly speaking in international events. Alexandre leads the company vision from the business and R&D side.

Julie Letierce. Co-founder, Operations assistant

Julie previously worked as an event organiser and coordinator for public organisations, and for a film production company. She created educational movies, lead scientific exhibitions and workshops, and established media strategy for cultural events including music festivals. She is also a researcher in science communication at the Digital Enterprise Research Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway, focusing on how scientists interact with mainstream audiences on the Social Web. Julie focuses on the strategy, communication and administrative issues of the company.

Advisors

Dr. Yves Raimond. Co-founder, R&D Advisor

Yves is a Principal Software Engineer at the BBC Future Media & Technology and is the project leader of the Music Ontology. He holds a Ph.D. in Music and the Semantic Web from the Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary University, London. He regularly participates in Music Hack Days, has done some consulting work for Universal Music Group, and is an invited expert in the Connected Media Experience consortium. Yves advises the company on R&D issues.

Prof. Stefan Decker. R&D and Business Advisor, Investor

Stefan is the Director of the Digital Enterprise Research Institute and a full Professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He previously established one of the first Semantic Web Research Groups at Stanford University while consulting startup companies in the Silicon Valley, before he had a position at the Information Sciences Institute at theUniversity of Southern California. He is also one of the most widely cited Semantic Web scientists and co-founded Ontoprise in 2000, one of the first company using Semantics for Data integration. Stefan advises the company on R&D and Business issues.

- B2B: API and data access, from small business to large compagnies (music blogs, record websites, etc.) that want to enable artist fact-sheets and recommendations to their websites. ROI: Rentention of consumers on their website, driving more sales.

- B2C: User-facing website for music discovery (ad-based and premium services) and integration with third-party players (plug-ins). ROI: Enhancing discovery of new content, amazing happiness. 

- A world-class team in Web technologies (RD and project / team / product management)

- A university spin-out, i.e. benefits from several years of RD investments in the underpinning technologies

- Partners with OpenLink Software, an industry acclaimed technology leader in the realm of high-performance data access middleware, integration, and management, and 3scale, a leader in API Management infrastructure for the programmable Web.