Gerard Kunkel, a former Comcast exec and recent advisor to Microsoft with extensive interactive app and video navigation experience, has launched a startup in the Philadelphia area that will focus on media and entertainment user experience technologies.
Kunkel said the new company, called SHUX App, is keeping specifics about company and its product focus under wraps for now.
But here’s what Kunkel is willing to say about it for now: “The impetus for doing something now is that over my years working in media and entertainment technology I’ve learned a great deal about human behavior with TV, desktop and mobile applications,” Kunkel, SHUX App’s founder and CEO, said in an email message. “I’m embarking on a new venture that leverages what I’ve learned about these behaviors into a highly sharable user experience targeted at a young, mobile, and extremely interactive audience.”
According to Kunkel’s LinkedIn profile, SHUX App got underway this month.
Of recent note, Kunkel had served as a media strategy advisor to Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, focusing on areas such as the Mediaroom IPTV platform (sold to Ericsson in 2013), the Xbox 360, Xbox Live and the controller-free Kinect system.
Before that, he was the SVP of user experience and product design at Comcast, and also served as president of GuideWorks LLC, a joint venture between Comcast and what is now Rovi, which exited the J.V. in 2010. Kunkel is also late of WorldGate Communications, a company that was once focused on interactive programming guides and applications before shifting to videophones before filing for bankruptcy and winding down operations several years ago.
