By Clyde Noel

Clyde Noel/ Special to the Town Crier

Driving down San Antonio Road, you see a big red and white sign that flashes “Fireclick.” If you wonder what it’s all about, Fireclick Inc. is one of the hottest Silicon Valley software start-ups.

Companies that do business on the Web realize download time is a critical element in their business. It is generally agreed that if a site doesn’t load in 30 seconds, the user will go to another site.

“Our goal is to drive e-commerce success by preventing customers from getting frustrated and defecting,” said Ram Srinivasan, chief executive officer and president of Fireclick. “Our server-site software delivers a better-quality surfing experience so customers won’t abandon their shopping carts.”

Blueflame 1.0 from Fireclick is designed to increase the performance of any Web site. The software is loaded on a stand-alone server running Windows NT or Sun Solaris 2.5X and acts as a proxy between the Web server and a router.

A proprietary Blueflame intelligence engine monitors user traffic and determines which pages and page elements are most commonly used. When a user accesses the Web site, the Blueflame server primes the client cache with content that it thinks will be asked for next. The response time is instant.

“We speed up the Web for consumers,” said Steve O’Brien, vice president of marketing and business development. “We sell to dot-coms, either content or commerce sites. Content means companies like CNBC, CNN or ESPN. Commerce sites would be Amazon.com, Buy.com or Auto Trader.com.”

The e-commerce industry loses $362 million in sales each month because users give up on sluggish Web sites. The losses could impact the future of e-commerce online consumers because they become so frustrated they revert to shopping at traditional brick-and mortar stores. Online companies, like Fireclick, have developed strategies and tools to avoid these potential lost sales.

Fireclick was founded in February 1999 by three Stanford University graduate students who observed the World Wide Web was not living up to its potential.

The company’s founders - Xavier Casanova, Stephane Kasriel and J.P. Crametz met at Stanford and shared a common background. All three were originally from France and attended the prestigious Ecole Polytechnique.

In the fall of 1998, using their spare time, the trio began experimenting with a technology they called “Fast Cactus” that would speed Web access for end-users. This became the prototype product for the company they called “eRacer.”

The idea of speeding up Web access was so compelling they were able to obtain funding from Menlo Ventures, Atlas Venture and a couple of angels.

In May 1999, the founders added Srinivasan as the company’s president and CEO and he immediately recruited a management team. The name was changed to Fireclick a month later and the company moved to its current headquarters at 289 S. San Antonio Road in Los Altos.

The company now has 40 employees and is aggressively looking for more. Fireclick will be on hand at the Art & Wine Festival this weekend showing Internet demonstrations of the Blueflame product and soliciting new employees.

Customers currently using Blueflame are the Motley Fool, Quicken and Intermallamerica.com. Some of the partners involved with Fireclick are Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and Aleton Web Systems. For more information, visit their Web site at www.fireclick.com.