{"id":16938,"date":"2015-10-06T22:00:48","date_gmt":"2015-10-07T02:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/creator\/?p=16938"},"modified":"2020-03-30T18:27:54","modified_gmt":"2020-03-30T22:27:54","slug":"meet-the-company-delivering-thrills-to-thousands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/ideas\/community-stories\/member-spotlight\/meet-the-company-delivering-thrills-to-thousands","title":{"rendered":"Meet the company delivering thrills to thousands"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine feeling the tension in a World Cup stadium as the ball ricochets off a goalie\u2019s fingers, or hearing the deep breath of an Olympic skier about to leap onto the slopes. Stefan Birrer wants to deliver these thrills to everyone.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have the technology that solves the issue of real time, you can experience both those things as they happen,\u201d says Birrer, CEO of PhenixP2P<\/a>. \u201cVery few companies can make it work at that scale.\u201d<\/p>\n

Companies like Akamai Technologies currently dominate this market with huge deployments of servers that allow them to stream major events.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s eventually where we want to be,\u201d says the member of Chicago\u2019s WeWork River North<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But Birrer wants to accomplish all that in a different way. Rather than build banks of servers or invest in expensive hardware, he is developing a global peer-to-peer platform that streams content through shared networks. That way, says Birrer, \u201ceveryone in the network is part of the distribution.\u201d<\/p>\n

When you have multiple viewers, it inevitably causes problems like diminished video quality and lag time. Birrer says that testing to make sure that the quality is the same that you\u2019d expect from the big-name players requires a \u201ccontinuous effort.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were a number of times the results weren\u2019t good enough,\u201d Birrer says. \u201cMost of my experiments didn\u2019t perform close enough to what I expected them to do, and it\u2019s draining.\u201d<\/p>\n

The process reminds him of when he researched peer-to-peer technology at Northwestern University. He spent countless nights mapping out algorithms with no guarantee that any of his experiments would yield results. When he wasn\u2019t successful, he\u2019d come back the next day to grind it out again.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you get something done by the time you want it to get done, there\u2019s value there,\u201d Birrer says. \u201cBut if you don\u2019t get it done after that time you set out to get it done, you may not get the value you want. I learned to prioritize what would get me the most value and not compromise my deadlines. Sometimes that meant scheduling time to hang out with my friends and then going back to the lab at 3 in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n

After countless test runs, Birrer is preparing to launch his platform\u2019s beta phase. He\u2019s spoken about it at conferences and put together a short list of clients he wants to help him test his technology.<\/p>\n

Instead of a wide release, PhenixP2P is opting for a small-scale soft launch focusing on clients in Germany, Canada, and Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to build our core technology out by onboarding the right customers at the right time,\u201d Birrer says. \u201cIt\u2019s an opportunity tradeoff, and we\u2019re being realistic about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Birrer is upbeat about how far his company has come.<\/p>\n

\u201cInitially, we didn\u2019t have peer-to-peer capabilities built in,\u201d he says. \u201cNow we\u2019ve turned it into a platform where you can come to us, and we can provide capabilities to stream to tens of thousands of people. The goal is millions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photographs by PhenixP2P<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imagine feeling the tension in a World Cup stadium as the ball ricochets off a goalie\u2019s fingers, or hearing the deep breath of an Olympic skier about to leap onto the slopes. Stefan Birrer wants to deliver these thrills to everyone. \u201cIf you have the technology that solves the issue of real time, you can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":917,"featured_media":16940,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43903,43911],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-stories","category-member-spotlight"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMeet the company delivering thrills to thousands<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"PhenixP2P's CEO Stefan Birrer wants to deliver thrills to everyone with streaming.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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