Odd couple join forces to track progress of electronic documents
David Finlayson
Province
CEO and co-founder Peter Nieforth (left) and chairman of the Board of Co-founders Alfred Dorey opened their own company that provides security for electronic documents. — EDMONTON JOURNAL
EDMONTON — An Edmonton structural engineer and a Vancouver financial consultant launching a document-software company may seem like an odd combination.
The key link is Halifax, where Alfred Dorey and Peter Nieforth grew up together and kept in touch as they went their separate ways.
Dorey — a former University of Alberta engineering instructor and now business development manager at Edmonton‘s Colt Engineering — was intrigued when Nieforth called about a PDF security and tracking application created by former Adobe developer Narayan Sainaney.
“I called Alfred and asked him why he hadn’t opened the PDF I sent him,” Nieforth says. “He asked how I knew, and it went from there.”
“It piqued my interest right away when I saw what it could do,” says Dorey. “It answers the question, is anyone reading this stuff?”
Soon, Dorey was chairman of Vancouver-based Vitrium Systems, and Nieforth became full-time CEO. Three years later they have 20 employees and an application called Docmetrics that tracks who views PDFs sent over the web, how many pages they read, and even how long they spend on each page.
The newest version, released this week, allows users to add fully branded dynamic forms to their white papers and other PDF-based marketing materials.
The key is combining Adobe Reader with Flash to tap into the multi-billion dollar market for tracking documents and determining how people are engaging with the content, Nieforth says.
“Millions and millions of PDF documents are passed along every day and nobody knows what’s happening to them,” Nieforth says. “We have the first application in the world that does that.”
The original Protectpfd security application is still going strong, but they see Docmetrics as the future, Nieforth says.
Privately-held Vitrium, which has 55 shareholders, is very close to breaking even, and Dorey expects Docmetrics to give them a big surge.
New $1.5-million financing is about to close, “and then it’s onward and upward,” Dorey says. Although it is new technology, the concept is so simple that everyone gets it, he adds. The pair acknowledge the ultimate goal is to be acquired by a larger company. They’ve already had offers, “but we’re not ready to sell just yet,” Dorey says.