Why DDC CEO Farid Naib wants to save you $3.5 million

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Document Depository Corporation CEO Farid Naib keynotes the 2010 Philly Startup Leaders Founders Factory. [Speech starts at 15:00 mark]
Cristina Greysman likes to say that DDC was born out of pain, the kind that once cost her boss $3.5 million.
In selling a previous company, CEO Farid Naib was unable to find important documents like lease agreements and contracts to close the deal. “The [purchasing] company held $3.5 million of the purchase in escrow until he produced the documents,” says Greysman the director of business development at DDC. “He took a hit on the valuation because no one knew where these documents were.”
The disorganization led Naib to found Document Depository Corporation a service that helps large companies keep track of important documents by leveraging the cloud and lots of metadata in ways that would make Google Docs jealous.

“Too much critical data is passed around with email. It’s not a best practice. Email was not meant to be a document repository,” she says.
The company’s main product is what it calls a “virtual data rooms” for venture capital firms, large organizations and real estate firms includes features like:

• Allowing only certain members of a management team to have access to a document.
• Pinging your staff when certain documents haven’t been uploaded yet
• Granting documents an “expiration date” for materials like insurance policies
• Attached metadeta to documents to place it in your company’s workflow
• Tools for allowing VC firms to see the status of their entire portfolio, in real time

DDC says it has roughly 60 clients all up and down the East Coast. From its offices at 1500 Market Street, the company has easy access to its client base and some its local partners, including Vuzit who provides the company’s document viewer.
Currently, the company is seeking a match for the $100,000 it received from Ben Franklin Technology Parters.