Beaufort County son to launch Veribu; could be next Web craze | Eastern North Carolina Now

    A young web developer with Beaufort County roots might just be on the brink of making it big, very big, in the world of internet entrepreneurship. Just one year into the making of Veribu, a browser-based communications utility, 23-year-old Jason Humphries said that he and his two partners have already turned down an offer of $2.5 million, from an Indiana-based company, for ownership of the Web site.

    Veribu is unique in that it provides a platform for all three major mediums of communication--video chat, texting and phone calls--either in real time or via messaging, without having to download and install any software, as with the video-chat platform Skype. Instead, Veribu's video chat, texting and phone calls are based in Adobe Flash Player, a media plug-in that is built into most browsers, such as Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. Users have 'Friends' with which they communicate, like on Facebook; however, specific communications can be private between selected 'Friends', and are not shared amongst all 'Friends' on a 'Wall'.

    "You can think of Veribu as a browser-based marriage between Skype and Facebook, without the downloads/installations or the social network fluff," reads Veribu's explanation of services.



    Veribu's closest competition right now, according to Humphries, is Tokbox, which offers browser-based video chat; but not the ability to text, place phone calls, or send messages.

    "We could wake up tomorrow and somebody come out of the woodwork who has created something very similar to us, but, you know, you've just got to push through it and hope that doesn't happen," said Humphries.

    Humphries said that he has been working furiously to perfect Veribu since graduating from the University of South Carolina in May 2009, when a well-connected friend, 23-year-old Jonathan Cook, approached him with the idea of making a dating Web site, incorporating video chat, for college students. When Humphries got the call, he was in Washington helping his late grandfather, Nathan Earl Woolard, pull grapevines, on his 80-acre farm off Slatestone Road. It was at this same house, owned by Nathan Earl and Josephine, where a sixth-grade Humphries had been inspired by a Dateline special on Shawn Fanning, the creator of Napster, to start reading books on web programming and development.

    "I remember watching the whole thing and being enthralled at how this guy could create this program in his dorm room and have 50 million users," said Humphries. "Instantly, it clicked in my head, that's what I want to do for the rest of my life, if I had my say."

    Without seeing much opportunity in the current job market to capitalize on his recently acquired finance degree and anxious to use his programming knowledge, Humphries agreed to help Cook build the site. Humphries moved to Cook's parents' house in Hilton Head, where he and Cook worked 10- to 15-hour days from May through Aug. 2009 conceptualizing and building Veribu. (The name is a play on 'Malibu', the location of Cook's alma mater, Pepperdine University.)

    "As I got deeper into the actual development of Veribu, and looking around at what potential competition we have, I realized there's no other site out there that's offering a video chat in a social network within the browser," said Humphreys.

    Humphreys and Cook agreed that they should drop the dating-site idea and pursue the creation of a browser-based communications platform. A crude, unsophisticated alpha version of Veribu, with just the video-chat option, was enough for Cook to procure a six-figure amount from one of his connections, a friend from Pepperdine, whose father is a wealthy real-estate investor in Las Vegas. In exchange for the seed capital, Cook's friend was given an equal part ownership interest in Veribu.

    "We've known ever since we secured that first round of funding that we have a chance, it's just how we execute it," said Humphreys.

    The money allowed Veribu to hire business-plan consultants Growthink and boutique public relations firm Spark PR, which will ultimately attract other investors and users. Humphries and his partners haven't decided on a pricing strategy yet, but they are still planning to take Veribu public by Sept. 18. The site that is available now at Veribu.com is not the finished version.

    Humphries spent the entire summer living in Washington Park with his parents, Mike and Judy Humphries, where he could really focus on becoming very familiar with every aspect of Veribu. Judy Woolard Humphries attended Bath High School and Mike Humphries attended Washington High School from his sophomore to senior years. They met as cast members of a Blackbeard play in Bath. After college, they raised their two boys in Greenville, S.C., where they had jobs. They have recently moved back to Washington, where they plan to retire.