Meta Search
Google for your files Search your Desktop, Google Drive, Dropbox, Gmail, Evernote, and everything else the way you’d search the Internet.
Meta Search was a file search engine provider established in Boston in 2014 by co-founders Jason Briggs, Emily Pavlini, and Aaron Taylor. The inspiration for the company came to Briggs, a computer science student at Williams College, after he observed his mother struggling to locate files on her computer. This personal experience led to the creation of an application called TidyPro, which analyzed a computer's files and suggested organizational folders.
The project evolved from a simple desktop cleanup tool into a more ambitious venture after participating in a Williams College business plan competition. Although the team placed third, an audience member's interest and offer to match funds if they raised $12,500 served as the catalyst to pursue the idea as a business. The initial concept pivoted from desktop organization to a more robust B2B solution, becoming Meta Search. The company successfully raised $500,000 in a seed funding round in February 2015.
The core service of Meta Search was a universal search engine that connected with various third-party cloud storage services and devices. This allowed users to search for their files across disparate platforms like Google Drive, Dropbox, and Evernote from a single interface. The technology utilized machine learning and natural language processing to automatically tag documents based on their content, enabling a more intuitive and powerful search experience. The company gained traction, launching to thousands of beta users, and found a particular foothold within the financial services industry, where it helped analysts streamline the production of deliverables.
In 2016, Meta Search was acquired by Diffeo, an AI startup working in a similar space, in a move that merged their complementary technologies. The combined entity aimed to build an AI-powered research assistant. Following this, Diffeo itself was acquired by Salesforce in 2019, integrating the technology and team into its broader AI initiatives. Keywords: file search, universal search, cloud search, document management, natural language processing, machine learning, personal search engine, enterprise search, Jason Briggs, Diffeo, Salesforce acquisition, TidyPro, desktop search, cross-platform search, file indexing, smart tags, information retrieval, financial services tech, Boston startup, Williams College