Escient, LLC

After Scott sold his voicemail company near Boston, he moved to Carmel, Ind. and applied his technological savvy and business acumen toward merging Internet power with electronic appliances and devices to allow millions to access entertainment and information in remarkably easy and previously unheard-of ways.

Since that time, Escient-related companies led by Scott have made major breakthroughs in digital music, movie convergence technologies and data storage.

THE BEGINNING
In July 1996, Scott and three other Indiana entrepreneurs formed Escient, LLC, which had one subsidiary (Tom Doherty, Inc.) and one product (TuneBase.) As the name Escient implies, the focus was on "the science between entertainment and technology." The motto soon became, "We make technology behave." Within a few years Scott arranged for Escient to acquire the assets of 10 companies. Those assets were divided among Escient’s companies.

ESCIENT CONNECTIONS

• Tom Doherty, Inc. – This company became a division of Escient, LLC, in 1996 but remained a separate legal entity. It was renamed Escient Solutions in 2001 and sold to Patriot Investments in 2003, where it was renamed electronic evolutions (e2).
• StarMatix – This company was purchased in January 1999 and became a division of Escient but a separate legal entity. In 2001, StarMatix was renamed PowerFile. Another company named PowerFile (which is unrelated to Escient) bought all of the assets. Scott serves on its board of directors.
• Escient Convergence – Although this company was not formed until 2000, some of the technologies acquired by Scott played a vital role in this company’s later development of the revolutionary FireBall. The assets and Escient name were sold in 2003 to Escient®.
• OpenGlobe – This company also was not formed until 2000 but leveraged assets previously acquired by Scott from other companies worldwide. All assets were sold in 2003 to Escient®.

TRANSFORMATION OF ESCIENT
At the helm of Escient, Scott searched the entire globe to find and acquire core music recognition technologies – including those from CDDB, LLC; ION; the Quintessential Player; and Cantametrix – in order to carefully construct the company now known as Gracenote, the undisputed leader in global digital entertainment technology.

During a corporate restructuring at the end of 1999, Escient merged with and into CDDB, Inc., now known as Gracenote, one of the first companies to develop the music recognition software now at the heart of several Internet music products, such as Apple’s iPod and iTunes, the music services of AOL and Yahoo, and Sony’s VIAO computer line. Gracenote is one of the first companies to offer legal downloads of millions of song lyrics.

At the same time, Escient Technologies, LLC was formed as a high-technology accelerator and management company that channeled promising new technologies into strategic positions in the marketplace. Its affiliated companies – StarMatix (now PowerFile); Tom Doherty, Inc. (now e2); Escient Convergence; and OpenGlobe (both now part of Escient®) – offered a variety of high-tech, user-friendly products, services, and technologies for home entertainment, data storage, and the Internet.