Jeff Brenner, CEO of Toronto startup
Pressly, says that the company was born out of two core perceptions. "It comes out of our belief that the battle for publications on touch devices is going to be fought on the web, through browsers, more than through native applications. And the web today is really broken on those devices—it's build for a click and scroll desktop environment."
That led Brenner, through his company
Nulayer, to build a platform that allows publishers to automatically optimize their websites for the touch-and-swipe world of tablets. The platform, launched a few months ago with the
Toronto Star, is very low maintenance for publishers, who need only drop an RSS feed into Pressly to let the platform do its work.
The innovative approach and the success of the
Star's launch recently led
Startup North to proclaim Pressly one of the Canadian startups to watch in 2012. The company already provided much to watch at the tail end of 2011. Over the holidays, they launched with the tablet-optimized retail site
logicbuy.com, and just this week prestigious UK business magazine
The Economist launched an entirely new publication on Pressly.
Brenner says that within the next two to three months, he expects the company to launch its self-serve platform for smaller publishers. So far, the Pressly team has grown to 10 staff members, Brenner says. He expects that number to grow. "I can tell you the rate we've been growing the past few years is to double every year, and I expect that to pretty much continue on into the future."
Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Jeff Brenner, CEO, Pressly