We’ve seen countless Microsoft veterans leave Redmond to create their own startups, but that hasn’t happened as much with Amazon employees.
That makes a new company called Wire Labs all the more interesting. The startup, which has raised $150,000, was founded by CEO Piragash Velummylum and CTO Jordan Timmermann.
Velummylum told us that his company is in the mobile space, but did not want to provide more details. This much we do know: The four-man Wire Labs team that came together in Februrary is chock-full of talent and experience.
Velummylum spent nearly six years in digital media and cloud computing at Amazon and is responsible for pitching the Amazon Cloud Drive and Cloud Player initiative to CEO Jeff Bezos, eventually founding the Cloud Drive team. Prior to that, he authored more than 16 patents within the digital media, TV-commerce, software and video games, digital music, and digital video spaces at Amazon.
Timmermann has spent time working on the back-end of Amazon’s Instant Video products. There are two others on the team: Jared Russell, a former Microsoft engineer who worked on Windows 8 UI, and Lee Faris, another Amazon developer. All four guys have been friends for a long time.
Velummylum said he enjoyed his time at Amazon.
“It’s a really cool place to work and an awesome environment for anyone who wants to build,” he said. “I got to work with Jeff Bezos, start a team and be an engineering lead — like, holy shit, that’s like building a company.”
Of course, he “built” that company without all the nuances of running your own startup, like raising money, for instance. So why is he now taking the leap?
“It’s always been something I wanted to do and it’s been in the back of my mind,” said Velummylum, who left Amazon in November. “Anyone who knows me would tell me that I’d do it one day.”
We’ll be following this company closely and will have more information about Wire Labs as soon as it’s available.
