When Barry Su started a Web hosting business in 2000, most of his small-business clients asked for top placement on local search engines so they could attract more customers to their sites.

Because his clients spoke mostly Chinese, like Su, or Spanish, they had trouble marketing themselves to English-speaking customers. Others wanted to reach their counterparts in China but had trouble finding Chinese company listings in English.

So Su began tackling a basic dilemma of the Internet age.

“We could build them a beautiful Web site, but if nobody could find the company, what’s the point?” he asked rhetorically.

Tyloon decided to focus on yellow pages directories as a way to simplify multilingual searches for products and services. Then he really began thinking globally.

If an export-import company in Los Angeles wanted to reach an unknown counterpart in China, he reasoned, there was no translation software that could connect the two companies. By using yellow pages directories, Su would enable his small-business clients to search a database in their own language and find their counterpart in China or Latin America, or vice versa.

He spent seven years analyzing the logarithmic scales of Google and Yahoo to understand how search engines work. Because he needed a searchable database, Su ended up buying access to yellow pages directories with 15 million listings of U.S. businesses. He then hired a technology guru to build a proprietary “single-pipe” multilingual search engine that would translate the U.S. yellow page directories into Chinese and Spanish.

“For the last 10 years, the Internet has grown radically but language is still an obstacle,” said Grace Su, Barry’s wife and Tyloon’s vice president and chief executive. “We’re creating a search engine so anyone can search for a business in any country but get results in their own language.”

Turning the pages


Nacho Hernandez, chief executive of iHispanic Marketing Group in La Jolla, said Tyloon’s biggest concern as a startup is getting enough customers to drive traffic to its own site.

Moreover, there are plenty of important players in the directories sector including Verizon’s SuperPages.com, which has a Spanish equivalent, and newcomers such as Jake Baillie’s TrueLocal.com, which has mapping systems and graphics but still fights for market share with Yellow Pages.

“It’s good to see small companies trying to compete,” Hernandez said of Tyloon. “But in order to have important information for their users, they had to buy their data.”

Last week, a report from the Newspaper Association of America found that 75 percent of online consumers use search engines for product or service information. That’s one of the reasons so many businesses are trying to team up with Google or Yahoo! to reach millions of potential customers.

Both Google and Yahoo have tools that leverage mechanical translation technology and allow queries in one language with responses in another language, usually on a split screen. The Internet giants have well-established brands and a far broader reach, of course, but Su believes they can’t offer the direct and detailed service his site does.

Tyloon’s clients so far are an eclectic mix of local companies that are trying to bridge the language barrier as well. They include Vivitar, an Oxnard-based manufacturer of cameras and lenses; Sky Link TV, a Los Angeles-based Chinese cable programmer; and Container Worldwide Inc., a cargo firm in the City of Industry.

Su believes the addition of a Chinese yellow pages database in the next few months will be a boon for export-import businesses in Southern California.

The diversity of Tyloon’s workforce befits a multilingual search engine and data base manager.

Two programmers in Slovenia handle the firm’s tech support. An editor in Canada corrects many of the English language problems presented by customers who are trying to build their first Web site.

The company plans to add French, Japanese and German language yellow pages within the next year. In a few months, it expects to add a database of 11 million businesses in China, and 2.4 million in Canada, that can be searched in various languages. The company recently hired Juan Yanez Carrera as its marketing manager for Latino businesses with the goal of building its presence in Southern California.

Tyloon sells ads and provides Web hosting and design through Su’s AbleDesigner.com. Though Su is talking to potential investors, he says he has turned down several clients who wanted to buy into the company.

“We believe Tyloon will become known as the next generation search engine because it is breaking the language barrier,” said Carrera.

Tyloon Inc.

Year Founded:

2004

Core Business:

Local multilingual search engine and yellow pages directory

Employees in 2005:

25

Employees in 2006:

30

Goal:

To become a leading global search engine for small businesses

Driving Force:

Providing a means for English and non-English speaking Internet users to do worldwide business together