The Knoxville News-Sentinel, Tenn., Carly Harrington column

May 23--When Michael Crain became a father four years ago, he began writing down messages that he wanted his son to know if he wasn't around.

"I started by writing it down, and it got old. I thought there has to be a better way to do this," Crain said. "I started looking at video, and I couldn't find a delivery mechanism for a delayed video message."

With two sons and a daughter on the way, the 29-year-old former University of Tennessee football player is attempting to change the way we create and share memories through Vuture. Founded last June, Vuture is an IOS app that allows users to schedule video messages for the future.

Here's how it works: You record a video message using your iPhone or iPad. If you like it, click use it to save. The video uploads to the cloud network and you schedule a delivery date to the person you choose.

Once it uploads to the cloud, the video is deleted from the user's phone so there aren't a ton of videos on your device.

As a market representative for Federated Insurance, Crain initially thought he'd just tap into his contacts in the insurance business and to funeral homes for when people die. But he quickly found Vuture's potential use could hit a much broader market.

"I talk about dying all day long, so that was my initial premise for the app. But as the designers and I started talking about it, we realized the use is much grander than that," he said, noting the potential for fitness reminders, or as a business-to-business tool that allows companies to monitor customers through its analytics.

The app is currently in its beta phase.

While revenue models are being worked through, Crain said users would be allowed limited recording capabilities before being required to pay. Payment could be based on storage (think DropBox), or for businesses, on each video pushed.

"It's something we hope we can go to a large corporation and say this is a way you can talk to not only your employees, your customers here but also overseas. We think we can scale pretty quickly," he said.

Crain is currently participating in the What's the Big Idea! business plan competition and the Knoxville Entrepreneur Center's MediaWorks accelerator program. Crain said the experience has been invaluable.

"There's so many unknowns. I'm a good salesman, but they've taught me you don't have to know everything for every part of your business," he said.

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