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Bob McNulty hands off the microphone to Friday’s speaker, Steve Mattioli.
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A great story about building a new company from scratch and what it takes to compete in today’s market was the topic delivered by
Steve Mattioli, President of Yotta Yotta in Kirkland. “We’re 14 months old, have 120 employees, and after beta testing, we’re ready to deliver our product. No customer buys
technology,” said Mattioli. “People buy business solutions. Our challenge is to be where the market is going.”
Yotta Yotta opened its doors on January 6, 2000. Mattioli said the company
was formed to research and develop new technology in data storage. “Storage consumes 55 cents of every dollar spent by business today. More data
storage companies opened in 2000 than in all the previous years combined. No new technologies in data storage have entered the market for over 10
years. Our company has devised a new architecture which allows for much faster retrieval and encryption of data stored. Storage is a non-discretionary
budget item and customers can’t do business without storing data generated by that business,” Mattioli observed.
 He explaining the company’s name, Mattioli said, “A
yotta byte is a term assigned to the largest capacity of storage. It is 10 to the 24th power. The second yotta is just for fun … no one forgets our name! In Yiddish, it means “to go on and on.”
In Chinese, it means “I want it, I want it.” In Japanese, unfortunately, it means “You’re a little tipsy.”
Mattioli said Yotta Yotta’s customer base is in the communications sector.
“Telephone companies are evolving rapidly into new services. They depend on data storage. Our company has 13 patents and six applications currently in
hand. But, even at that, our most important asset is our people. In three instances, Yotta Yotta has claimed the Investor’s Award of top 100
companies. People cause things to happen. Our 120 people push the envelope and make what we do special.” Mattioli said there are openings at his firm for employment.
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Steve Mattioli chats with Jim Owens after Friday’s meeting.
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Yotta Yotta has just begun delivery of their Beta product. “We will change the way in which the world does business,”
said Mattioli. “Our funding has come from three rounds of raising capital. We’ve received tremendous support. Things have changed in the last six months with the tech market down 60%. But, we are
focusing on our job … not what we attempt but what we accomplish.” When asked about going public, he said, “Yes, we will go public after we experience two full quarters of successful delivery of our
product. The return-on-investment is much shorter today than just a year ago, so we’ll need the infusion of those funds.”
Don Deasy asked Mattioli to “describe what your product does,” and he said
their product will be purchased by storage service providers. It is a software product. Because of demand, the storage market doubles every 3 to 4
months. The next 24 months will be critical to the users of storage data software. Yotta Yotta parallels super-computing technology, providing
multi-levels of encryption. When asked if his service would come to Quincy Quincy, Steve said, “It’s a last mile issue (something that Deasy didn’t want
to hear), but there is all kinds of technology available to deliver these products and their service almost anywhere.”
Mattioli, as a means of comparison, closed by saying that “a megabyte of
memory cost $1 million dollars 25 years ago. Today, that same megabyte costs just $1.00.” Who ever thought we’d be hearing a program on Yotta, let alone two Yottas!
Thanks to Bob McNulty for his introduction.
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