Modu: A Ton of Money for a Potential Game-Changing Start-up

Not many start-ups land $100 million-plus in funding. Investors have to be convinced they're helping create something huge. Maybe Israeli start-up Modu will be that kind of game changer.

Certainly the concept is intriguing. Modu, started by the guy who created the USB flash drive (and sold it to SanDisk for $1.6 billion), is developing a modular cell phone/music player/file storage core. The idea is that you could slip this core into any number of devices. Drop it into a tiny cell phone when you're going out to dinner. Drop it into a Blackberry-type thing during business hours. Plug it into your car and the car will play your music and route your calls into a car-based phone. And so on.

But it's gotta cost a LOT to get this started. Modu will probably have to make the core plus the first devices it goes in, to seed the market. Eventually, it would likely want to license the technology so all sorts of consumer electronics companies could make Modu-powered devices. That's a long haul and a lot of potential roadblocks to overcome.

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