LeoNovus is a development-stage technology company working on an Internet-TV platform that will enable users to have full access to internet’s diverse and complex content, through a simple medium such as the TV.

The company is led by Gordon Campbell, a true tech visionary who has been recognized as the Entrepreneur of the Year by Inc. Magazine. He has pioneered many technological innovations, including the world's first Ethernet chip. One of his first companies, Chips and Technologies, was acquired by Intel in the early 80's. He was the co-founder of PortalPlayer, which was the first supplier of media processor chips for iPod, later acquired by Nvidia for about $357M. He was the Chairman of Cobalt Networks, which was acquired by Sun Microsystems for $1.5 bn. He has now joined forces with Dan Willis, who sold his previous venture AdscapeMedia to Google for $23M, with a goal of replicating their past successes in what could be their biggest venture yet.

The idea of the Internet TV has long ago been pegged as the next big tech thing. Many companies have attempted to enter the space with limited success, and none have been able to achieve adoption by a wider market. According to Gordon, the reason for this might be too much focus on streaming content and lack of attention on just delivering the diverse internet functionality.

“Yahoo widgets was an attempt at giving more functionality to users but that concept never caught on. Google TV was the first attempt at delivering full internet content, but the product lacked a good graphical interface, leading to a poor user experience. What the world is crying out for is a technology that can enable the TV to become the display to the web.”

“Our vision is to enable access to internet using a solution that is simple, but which does not compromise user’s web experience. A software solution that is either embedded in the chip, or a box, with a cloud-based service component.”

LeoNovus is all about the user experience. The product is based on an enhanced version of the Firefox browser, delivering 1080p HDTV content, with video and flash acceleration, and a personal smart agent, all designed for the best user experience. There are other nifty features such as the iPhone and Android app which would allow you to interact with the TV, using your smartphone.

The company is aiming to release a beta version of the product soon. According to Gordon, the response to demo sessions at some of the biggest tech companies has been terrific. Once the product is finalized, it is initially expected to be on sale as a TV plug-in, retailing for around $150.

The Opportunity

The beauty of LeoNovus’ solution is that it is a platform-agnostic software solution, with a back-end service component supporting targeted advertising model, something advertisers are very interested in. As such, the product is aimed at a wide spectrum of prospective partners, such as TV and chip manufacturers as an embedded solution, and content delivery service providers as part of the set top box.

A number of suitors may be interested in simply buying out the company to get into the web TV space, or to augment their existing offering.

The opportunity and the reward for a company valued at $25M is huge. The global market for LCD TVs is over 200M units per year. There is a general trend towards convergence, and today many TVs are shipped with some type of an internet enabling technology. If you think about embedding LeoNovus software in TVs and set top boxes, the size of the market can be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The stock is tightly held, the management team has an excellent track record and a wide following.

There are risks as well in that the product is still not finalized. Products already exist which offer the streaming-focused web TV experince. Last, but not least, investors from the last financing at $0.16 are sitting on a nice gain, with even $0.30 warrants in the money.

I took a small position in the stock recently, and I’ll look to add more as the story unfolds.