Who says the Windows Start Menu is dead? SweetLabs, a San Diego-based company whose Pokki app platform replicates the functionality of the old-fashioned Start menu on the traditional Windows 8 desktop, has moved its Seattle engineering outpost to a larger location in Pioneer Square to accommodate additional expansion.
The company’s Seattle office has grown to nine people, led by CTO Mark Chweh. SweetLabs is aiming to double that number by the end of the year, said Chester Ng, SweetLabs’ co-founder and chief marketing officer.
SweetLabs’ expansion in Seattle comes as Microsoft tries to appease longtime Windows users who are wary of the removal of the Start button from the traditional desktop in Windows 8. The Redmond company’s upcoming Windows 8.1 update will bring the Windows icon back to the lower left corner of the desktop, although it will still send people to the new Start screen, rather than triggering a familiar popup as Pokki does.
“We don’t think that really solves the problem that we’ve been trying to solve with Pokki, which is to give users who spend the majority of their time on the desktop a way to access all their stuff, get to the control panel, shut down their computer and access apps,” Ng explained.
SweetLabs has seen 3 million downloads of Pokki for Windows 8 since it came out of beta last fall. On average, the company says, Windows 8 users with Pokki installed click on the acorn icon in the taskbar 10 times a day, illustrating how ingrained the Start Menu habit has become for longtime Windows users.
Pokki is an app store that works on Windows versions dating back to Windows XP, providing a distribution channel for desktop apps based on common web technologies. It’s a free download. The functionality replicating the Start menu in Windows 8 was added last year, as Microsoft prepared to release Windows 8.
SweetLabs is backed by investors including Intel Capital, Google Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners. SweetLabs employs a total of 55 people, most of them in San Diego.
