PALO ALTO, Calif., April 23 (LocalBusiness.com) -- A high-profile team of major media companies, technology firms and venture capitalists have put up $67 million to fund Rearden Steel Technologies, a Silicon Valley start-up that promises to build innovative hardware and software that will "fundamentally change the home entertainment experience as we know it."
Steve Perlman, creator of WebTV, is founder of the company that pulled Series A funding from America Online, Mayfield, Vulcan Ventures, the Barksdale Group, Cisco Systems, EchoStar Communications Corp., The Washington Post Co. and Macromedia Ventures.
Rearden Steel Technologies, which has been operating since early 2000 in secret, is reportedly working on the next generation set-top box that will deliver features well beyond WebTV, TiVo and other similar devices in the marketplace.
In addition to powerful funding partners, Perlman also has a respected management team.
"It's rare to find an early stage company with impressive, seasoned management that has both a solid track record and proven success in the consumer market," Kevin Fong, managing partner at Mayfield, said in a press release. "When you combine this expertise with first-tier partners, great technology, a solid patent portfolio and the vision to solve real consumer problems, you earn the attention of investors."
Perlman was the creator, co-founder and president of WebTV Networks Inc., where he also developed the core technology for WebTV. He was a co-founder of Catapult Entertainment, an online video game technology company, and was the managing director of advanced products for General Magic, a handheld computing pioneer. Perlman was also a principal scientist at Apple Computer Inc., where his team developed much of the multimedia technology in Macintosh computers.
The chief operating officer at Rearden Steel Technologies is Bill Keating, a high-tech veteran whose last six businesses went public or were acquired. He was general manager of Microsoft's TV Platform Division and was a senior vice president at WebTV Neworks. He was also at General Magic and worked at Sun Microsystems.
Perlman declined to answer questions or provide specifics about his company's future products.
Rearden Steel is a reference to a company in Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged."