What we do

SmartFlix is a service that rents DVDs - just like your corner video store - but we rent the kind of videos that you can't find on every street corner. Videos on running lathes, making glass beads, welding steel, oil painting, building guitars... cool videos!

SmartFlix began serving hobbyists and hardware hackers in early 2003, and has been growing explosively since then.

Who we are

SmartFlix is a registered Massachusetts corporation, and operates out of Arlington, MA (just a few subways stops from Harvard Square and MIT). A few of the people you'll find there are:

	Travis J I Corcoran, founder, president, and original programmer. Travis started Technical Video Rental (now SmartFlix) because he wanted a low-cost way to learn about his desktop Sherline lathe. Before that, Travis graduated from Cornell University with a degree in Computer Science and Roman History, and worked at a succession of startups in the Boston area. In our full-page print ads, you can see Travis' hands holding the angle grinder. (And, yes, he knows that he should have the safety guard in place.)
	Pete Krautscheid, CTO. Pete graduated from Cornell University with a degree in Computer Science, and has brought his multi-disciplinary expertise to bear on e-commerce and application security at a variety of startups. In our full-page print ads, you can see Pete's hands playing the guitar.
	Susan Caruso, Purchasing Manager. Susan graduated from The University of California, Pennsylvania, and has helped out customers at several startups in the Boston area.
	Daniel Foskett, Art Director. Dan graduated from the University of New Hampshire, and has done design work for a variety of firms. In our full-page print ads, you can see Dan's hands drawing our old logo, when we were still Technical Video Rental.

Fun Facts

The first video we rented out was "Fundamentals of Machine Lathe Operation"...on VHS.

In our first month of operation, we rented out one video. In the second month, we rented three videos. In our third month, we rented out 14 videos...and growth has remained steady since then!

SmartFlix is - to the best of our knowledge - the largest how-to video rental store in the world.

SmartFlix runs entirely on open source software: we use Apache, Linux, PERL, mySQL, emacs, the Gimp, ruby, and KDE to get our jobs done.

Dogs are welcome in the SmartFlix offices. Given that most employees have at least one dog, there have been occasions when there have been more dogs than people here!