Brian Keairns

Digital Audio Stories and Software Development

One of the reasons I founded PlainTales was because I believe so strongly in the power of stories. It may seem like a strange transition to go from a 20+ year career in software and technology to starting a company that publishes classic children's stories on audio CD. But in actuality it's not as strange as it may seem. In fact what's more surprising to me is the continuity from one to the other. At the root of success for both endeavors lies three things: observation, imagination and storytelling.

When I was working in the software industry, at Microsoft and in Silicon Valley, I was initially immersed in the technology details just like everyone else. But the longer I worked on solving problems in the software world the more I realized the roots of any creative were the same.

To build good software you have to have well developed powers of observation, to see and understand the users environment. You need a strong imagination to envision a new environment created by the benefits of the software product. And finally you need to be a great storyteller so you can describe your idea to the people who will build it and use it.

These are the same skills that I believe are nurtured and refined by listening to classic stories. World class writers such as Kipling, Wilde, Hawthorne, Nesbit, and Andersen all write with incredible attention to details, with vivid imaginations and with magnificent storytelling powers. I believe listening to these incredible stories at a young age, or at any age, are a wonderful way to enhance and refine these vital creative skills. Whether these skills are used to write the world's next great classics, invent the next great technology or discover the next great scientific breakthrough, any of these endeavors will be enhanced by listening to these masters of the creative imagination.

Changes in 2008

The past year has been full of changes. At the start of the year I was still co-owner of CustomerVision Inc., an enterprise social networking software company. Early in 2008 I sold my ownership stake in CustomerVision and started a new publishing company called PlainTales Inc.

In some respects this seemed like a big change because most of my past experience had been in the software world. My dad had a technology business that he started in the 80s that sold products and services for Unix minicomputers.  This was my introduction to the technology business and after I graduated from the University of Northern Iowa in 1989 I moved to Seattle, where I worked for Microsoft when it was still a smallish company.

I left Microsoft in 1993 and worked for a couple of startups, including a company called Spry that launched the first dial-up Internet product in the world called "Internet In A Box". "Internet In A Box" was wildly successful and led to the sale of the company to CompuServe (which then became part of AOL Time-Warner).

After Spry was sold I decided to take a job in Silicon Valley with a small software company that was sold shortly after I got there and became the Internet software division of Attachmate. After the acquisition I decided to launch my first startup with a bunch of friends from Attachmate.

The company was called Cerebe Inc. and we were focused on service management software for broadband communications companies. We built version 1.0 of the software, landed a handful of customers and received a term sheet from a well known venture capitalist but the company never got enough momentum so I finally had to move on and consider it a learning experience.

After I sold my stake in Cerebe I moved back to Seattle and worked as a product manager for a software company for about five years, before founding CustomerVision. CustomerVision was one of the first companies to explore how social networking technology could be utilized in a corporate environment.

We had some great success stories, at companies such as Wells Fargo and CDS Global, but it was always a bit of a challenge to explain how bottoms up, collaborative technology could fit into the more structured corporate world.

After deciding to sell my stake in CustomerVision I decided to go in a brand new direction in starting PlainTales. PlainTales is a publisher of audio CDs and digital audiobooks. Our first titles are audiobooks for kids 3 to 12 and include classic stories, retold traditional stories and nature tales. Since I have kids aged 3 and 9 that are active listeners of audiobooks that was genre that I was very familiar with and the opportunity to work with the kids in launching the company was an added incentive.

In many respects PlainTales Inc. is a traditional publishing company, but one of our long term goals is to build a community of parents and kids that are interested in playing an active role in the stories that play a formative part in their lives. Some of that community building will undoubtedly take place online and will include new social networking technology such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. And even though audiobooks on CD will be with us for a long time, digital downloads and ebooks will become an increasingly important way for people to access our stories.

This is our founding idea:

"Great lives begin with great stories. That's why PlainTales creates high-quality audio stories for children and their families. We believe that masterful tellings of classic fairy tales, fables, and original children's stories do more than entertain. They inspire, educate, and encourage creative thinking. And yes, sometimes tickle your funny bone. When families listen to PlainTales together, they learn together. That's a story worth sharing."

PlainTales Making Progress

PlainTales has been in business for a little over 6 months now and we've reached a number of milestones.

• Six initial titles have been published in the PlainTales Classics line
• Two new lines are almost ready to be launched, PlainTales First Tales and PlainTales Explorers
• The initial titles are available for sale on Amazon.com
• Our first big PR push is scheduled for the first couple months of 2009

So far things have gone very well. The products are wonderful and they're continuing to gain an enthusiastic, ever growing audience.