Our History
The origins of Sighthound start in 1989, when our CEO (Jonathan) and President (Ryan) were rivals in a high-school programming competition. Ryan’s team won. Jonathan recovered, found Ryan again in 1994, and they co-founded IRdg in 1995.
In 1997 the IRdg founders sold their company to MediaGate and moved to Silicon Valley. There they met Sighthound’s VP of Platform Engineering, Alex. In 1999 they found Sighthound’s Chief Architect (Markus) online in Germany and asked him to move to California to start a new company, Voxeo.
Jonathan, Ryan, Alex, Markus and many others joined the founding team at Voxeo. Voxeo grew to be an industry powerhouse in telecommunications and speech recognition. Voxeo acquired 11 other companies, and was then acquired by Aspect Software in 2013 for $150 million - but not before the Voxeo founders spun out a new company (Tropo) which was acquired by Cisco in 2015 for close to $100 million. The team owned >80% of both companies when they sold.
In 2013, a new team - with people from IRdg, MediaGate, and Voxeo - came together to start Sighthound. Zain, a smart, hardworking entrepreneur with a Ph.D. in Computer Vision, joined them. They acquired another company, “Vitamin D”, and Sighthound was born.
Sighthound was created by Alex, Markus, Jonathan, RJ, Ryan, Zain and many others to make computer vision easy and valuable. Sighthound was also built on a best practice learned over the prior 20 years: if you make your customers exceptionally happy, they tend to buy more things from you. Eight years later, Sighthound customers include hundreds of companies, over five hundred law enforcement entities, and over 200,000 end-users.
In 2021 SIghthound acquired Boulder AI and a whole new team of great people joined Sighthound. Boulder AI’s hardware solutions provide Sighthound with the unique opportunity to serve our customers with their hardware and personalized computer vision software needs.
The Sighthound team would love to help make Computer Vision a happy (and valuable) experience for you, too.
IRdg founders, Orlando, Florida. 1995.
Our first data center - at IRdg. Winter Park, Florida. 1995.
Voxeo team in Santa Cruz County, California. 2000.
Voxeo's first lobby. Santa Cruz County, California. 2000.
Voxeo team in Orlando. 2000.
Glenn Maiden, Voxeon #2. Santa Cruz County, California, 2000. RIP, Glenn.
A typical 4-hour Voxeo dinner at Luciano's, 2001, Santa Cruz, California. RIP, Lucio.
Battery test at one of Voxeo's six multi-million dollar data centers. Circa 2006. Orlando, Florida.
Voxeo WOPPR (Workhorse Operations Packaged Processing Rack) Prototype.
Voxeo's 15,000 square foot 20th floor office.
Voxeo Beijing (formerly SipMethod) team.
A typical Voxeo all-hands meeting.
Building the Voxeo "Data Center In a Box".
Voxeo "Data Center In a Box" running nearly 12,000 phone calls.
The Widowmaker - an 1800 amp, 48 volt bus-bar at Voxeo's Orlando data center.
Voxeo WOPPR deployment #1
Voxeo WOPPR.
Starting construction of Voxeo's 50,000 square foot 10th floor office. Downtown Orlando.
Reviewing work on Voxeo's 10th floor office. Downtown Orlando.
Denny with the plan for Voxeo's 10th floor office. Downtown Orlando.
Voxeo WOPPR.
Voxeo senior leadership reviews the 10th floor build-out. Downtown Orlando.
Voxeo senior leadership reviews the 10th floor build-out.
A not-so-atypical sunset at Voxeo's downtown Orlando office.
Voxeo's 10th floor architectural plans. Our lobby itself was an easter-egg; it was shaped like an ear.
Voxeo's first espresso machine, which now resides in Sighthounds office.
Voxeo's 20th floor office on the night before opening.
Voxeo founders (and elementary school friends) reunion.
Five Voxeo WOPPR systems processing thousands of speech recognition sessions.
Voxeo's 20th floor office, opening day.
Voxeo's 20th floor office, opening day.
The original Voxeo "redacted stealth mode launch" shirt. This campaign was written about in the New York Times.
Second Voxeo customer summit.
Second Voxeo customer summit.
Second Voxeo customer summit.
Second Voxeo customer summit.
Voxeo Orlando team greets the new Voxeons in Germany (acquisition of VoiceObjects) and China (acquisition of SipMethod)
Voxeo poker tournament.
Voxeo summit party.
Voxeo hijinks, season 10, episode 7.
Voxeo hijinks, season 10, episode 7.
Voxeo hijinks, season 10, episode 7.
Voxeo cupcakes.
Voxeo picnic.
Voxeo picnic.
Voxeo picnic.
Voxeo picnic.
Tropo launch day (with tropical theme).
Tropo launch day (with tropical theme).
Voxeo's third customer summit, after party.
Voxeo Beijing, China.
Voxeo Cologne, Germany.
Voxeo Cologne, Germany.
Voxeo Cologne, Germany.
Voxeo "Netbook cluster" Demo.
Voxeo "Netbook Cluster" demo.
Voxeo + VoiceObjects.
Voxeo at Speechtek.
Voxeo "White Christmas in Florida"
Voxeo "White Christmas in Florida"
Voxeo USA / Germany / China ping pong tournament.
Voxeo USA / Germany / China ping pong tournament.
Voxeo Founder & CEO in a great deal of trouble.
Voxeo holiday party, Germany.
Voxeo holiday party, Germany.
Voxeo China snow day.
Voxeo China office.
Voxeo Orlando 10th floor office.
Voxeo Orlando 10th floor office.
Voxeo Orlando 10th floor office.
Voxeo Orlando 10th floor office, with motherboards from the founders first job in 1986.
Voxeo China.
Voxeo Orlando.
RIP, Tami.
Mayor Buddy Dyer and our founder.
Voxeo EU Customer Summit.
Voxeo EU Customer Summit.
Tropo CEO, Jason.
Voxeo ping pong.
Voxeo kids day.
Voxeo's original mission.
Voxeo Investor Day.
Voxeo Investor Day.
Voxeo Friday lunch.
Voxeo Cupcakes.
Sighthound CEO (Jonathan) and President & CTO (RJ) perform their infamous "deployment of a 20,000 port telephony platform in 3 minutes"
Voxeo theater room.
Voxeo summit.
Kevin Mitnick at Voxeo summit.
Voxeo summit.
RIP, Scott.
Voxeo summit, Blue Man after party.
Voxeo EU summit after party.
Voxeo Germany team.
Voxeo at SpeechTek, NYC.
Voxeo "Data Center In a Box", NYC.
Voxeo theater room.
Sighthound team closed in on completion of La Croix Tower. Winter Park, Florida.
Sighthound team takes a day-trip from Winter Park to downtown Orlando, Florida.
Sighthound visits another great Orlando company, JH Audio. This very office was actually Voxeo's first Orlando office in 2000.
Sighthound team lines up to get fitted for JH Audio's amazing In-Ear-Monitors (IEM's)
Brent gets an ear-mold done for his IEM's.
After 90 days, the company buys every new team member a Sighthound-branded JH Audio IEM.
After-IEM lunch at Amura, a downtown Orlando Sushi restaurant famous for its "JT Roll".
Nick at Sighthound, calling one of our great customers.
Sighthound holiday party.
Sighthound axe throwing holiday party.
Sighthound axe throwing.
Sighthound axe throwing.
Installation of our second gigabit fiber connection.
Sighthound Indian lunch.
Exploring the shell of the new Sighthound office. Winter Park, Florida. 2015.
Sighthound 007 party.
Sighthound 007 party.
Sighthound 007 party.
Sighthound 007 party.
Postscript:
Our fellow team members past and present go by different names: Voxeo “Voxeons”, Tropo “Troponauts” and Sighthound “Hounds”.
Many, many Voxeons, Troponauts, and Hounds were part of starting and growing each company. While we don’t have enough room here to tell your part of our history here, the full history is very much in our hearts and minds.
Many Voxeons and Troponauts are at Cisco, Aspect, and other companies; we hope to one day work with all of you again.
You may have heard of the PayPal Mafia. At least six other startups were born and are being raised by Voxeons and Troponauts. While not a mafia, we do refer to this effect as the “Voxeo Book Club”. Not quite as powerful (yet) as the PayPal team… but very well read. Very well read indeed.
The WOPPR systems pictured above ran the VCS platform, but the MCP had been retired. At Sighthound, our platform is called SIO (Sighthound IO), where we are also building a new MCP. In all pictures, NSMA still applies.