Behind the Screens with Pixazza's Chris Waterson
Earlier this year, we began shining a light on some of the unknown stars who are major value to some of Silicon Valley’s most promising companies. One of those stars is Chris Waterson, senior software architect at Pixazza, which turns static images into profit centers for publishers. Last year, the company raised $5.75 million from Google Ventures, Ron Conway, August Capital and CMEA Capital. A visitor to OK Magazine’s website, for example, might hover a mouse over a photo of Brad Pitt wearing shades, prompting the appearance of a little window. Within it, the visitor is presented with similar, less-expensive sunglass options from a list of vendors with which Pixazza works. If the fan buys a pair, Pixazza and the publisher receive a commission from the vendor. If a sale doesn’t occur, the two still share advertising revenue. Waterson helped launched Pixazza just two years ago, but the 40-year-old is no stranger to Silicon Valley startups. Waterson was also one of the earliest engineers at LiveOps, where he architected much of the crowdsourcing system; before that, he was a chief scientist at Netscape and a primary architect of the Mozilla browser.
