Online stashing, sharing of videos

What: StashSpace.com, based in Winthrop, Okanogan County

Who: Lars Krumme, executive vice president and co-founder

What it does: Offers online editing, storage and management for videos and photos

Employees: 18

History: Spinoff of HomeMovie.com, which started in 1999, mainly to convert customers' home videos to DVD. Back then, blank DVDs were selling for $45 and DVD burners cost thousands of dollars. HomeMovie sold a DVD conversion for $99.

The company later began giving users Web-based tools to edit video for burning on DVD.

"The technology and market today is where we wanted to be six years ago," Krumme said.

A new brand: HomeMovie is still around, but in August the company launched the StashSpace brand to emphasize video storage and sharing. StashSpace helps users move videos onto their computers, choose and edit specific scenes and upload them to the company's servers.

The software also acts as an offline photo and video manager.

Old business: Users still can send videotapes to the company, which digitizes them and uploads them to a subscriber account. The fee is $5 per tape.

A trendy business: Online video sharing is one of the hottest Web trends around these days. But Krumme said that unlike YouTube, StashSpace works with long-form video — those three hours of zoo-trip tape sitting in a shoebox somewhere.

Basic specs: The service works best with the Windows operating system, but Krumme said a more limited set of features is available to Mac users.

Rivals: StashSpace doesn't have a direct competitor, Krumme said, but some companies compete in certain areas of its business. One is JumpCut, a Web-based video-editing company recently purchased by Yahoo!

Looking for funding: The company is self-funded to the tune of about $4 million to date, but Krumme said he is looking for venture capital and partnership opportunities.

In the next year: Krumme said the company will launch a marketing push in the first quarter of 2007.

It has also been talking to potential partners, such as Microsoft's MSN unit, about combining some services.

— Kim Peterson