I just spent a fascinating two days at the Sofitel Hotel in Redwood City, CA; the site of the 2009 Dow Jones Wireless Innovation. The 200+ Attendees were a combination of VC's, reporters and executives from established mobile industry companies and startups who are setting the stage for the next generation mobile space that is one of the world's "shining spots in an otherwise black economy."
Both days started and ended with keynotes and panels, and sandwiched presentations from 60 of the brightest star's of mobile startups.
In the opening keynote and panel, the stage was set with thoughts of the likes of Apple, Google and RIM helping shift power from the carriers to the handset manufacturers with application stores and such ... fueling increased product and mobile application development and user choices. It was agreed that this creates a very dynamic tension in the industry, with the winners being the consumer's useability as well as opportunity for innovative application development startups!
Growth of new subscribers is absolutely slowing, from high double digits to 3 to 5%. We are shifting focus from new subscribers, to "How do I keep my customers" and "How do I create more value for my customers." The future is a handset that becomes the "control centre for a digital lifestyle." Dan Schulman, CEO, Virgin Mobile US.
Here's some meandering things I found interesting ... and continues to reinforce that this mobile business is very global, and successful companies in this space can come from anywhere. Canadian firms take note!!! You don't need to be in Silicon Valley to win!
Dan Schulman, CEO, Virgin Mobile US:
- says growth of new subscribers is absolutely slowing, due to handset market saturation as well as the recession. They are shifting focus from new subscriptions to 'How do I keep my customers' and 'How do I create more value for my customers." In essence ... carriers are more than ever focused on reducing churn.
- Smartphones, apps and data are the wave of future growth. Virgin Mobile is in a sweet spot for data ... convergence of good SMS usage, social network usage and LBS services.
- Just at the beginning of apps ... the future is that the handset becomes the "control central for a digital lifestyle"
- Expecting weaker carriers in industry to start really struggling and expecting downward pressure on pricing as they play price games during the share shift
- The handset is a very intimate device ... people don't want spam or unsolicited ads so they'll be policing this carefully
Marcelo Vieira, GM, Smartphone Business, Texas Instruments
- The new Palm Pre is the first device running their new OMAP3 technology, which allows for a multi-tasking environment
- Showed several devices from their lab ... holy crap ... when 4G networks hit, these devices will be available (takes 4 years of design and go to market to release new chipsets) ... 4.9" screens, HD output, 12 MPixel camera's, and a projector inside the device (projectors will be as common on phones in the future as digital camera's on now). We saw a projector demo ...
- Ease of use, innovation and stickiness of apps will become increasingly more important.
Anthony Lewis, VP, Open Development Verizon
- There will be much more "machine to machine" wireless interaction going on. For e.g. Health Care devices that read labels and tells you if it's ok with medication.
- His advice was that app and hardware developer need to attach problems that mobile uniquely solves ... don't compete against incumbents from the web space
Panel from "Making the Brand Mobile" (shown in picture: Panel at Dow Jones Wireless Innovation "Making the Brand Mobile" Douglas Brown @ Bank of America, Allen Duan @ MTV Networks, Edward Kaczmarek @ Kraft Foods, Max Mancini @ eBay, Henri Moissinac @ Facebook, David Barry @ Dow Jones Company)
- Facebook: "We're starting to think that mobile is not an extension of Facebook, it's going to be the main platform of Facebook. Norway, for example, 50% of Facebook access is from mobile." Facebook has 40,000 developers coding applications for it.
- Pace and intensity of change in mobile is hard to deny ... last year there was no Apple App store. The panel was split on iPhone for branding entrance; "iPhone is a good place to start .. we'll get it right there first" vs. "you need to have a wide handset strategy ... Symbian (O/S on Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, et. al.) represents 60% of all handsets in the world"
- Biggest mistake: "Don't try to replicate the user experience from your website. Instead, what are the core values of your offer and how do they apply to mobile?" Mobile web is not web ... it's a lot more like traditional software development 10 years ago (before Saas and Agile methods). And, yes, it is more expensive to develop for mobile ... prepare for it!
- Bank of America saw $6B of money transactions in mobile in 2008
- LBS (Location Based Services) giving users context sensitive experience is VERY Important to the strategy of all the companies
John Faith, GM&VP, Mobile, MySpace.com
- Explosive growth from Mobile ... seeing 20M accesses a month through mobile (75% from WAP, 25% App) ... eventually want to become platform agnostic
- Good jump on advertising thinking: 40% of pages on mobile web are advertising enable, but only 10% of that inventory is currently used (marketing opportunity!!!) ... focusing on "hypertargetting" (demographic, contextual and location based advertising)
- MySpace is great for musicians and bands ...next step, what does mobile mean for this group?
A show of hands in the audience. How many of you have accounts on:
- Facebook: 70%
- LinkedIn: 50%
- MySpace: 20%
- Twitter: 10%
(surprised at the Twitter response considering the press it's been getting!)
Alan Brenner, SVP of RIM, Blackberry Platform
-Release of Blackberry App store VERY soon
- there is a huge pentup anticipation to discover and acquire apps on Blackberry
- Subscribers expect both volume and quality ... their reputation for great, rich sticky apps will extend to the app store
- The Blackberry image of being an enterprise device is outdated ... of the 25M active Blackberry users, 50% are consumers, 50% are enterprise (and consumer interest is outstripping enterprise ... the Blackberry Bold is very popular)
- Big Change in application space over last year ... it's much more interesting to us now. GREAT time to be building apps on Blackberry right now.
- Want to challenge a combination of apps on device and apps on cloud
- $150M Blackberry Fund ... only 5 companies have been funded so far
- Smartphone industry is one huge growth areas, and RIM is well positioned here
- There is no inflection point where everything has or will become easier ... we take challenges one at a time and have relentless attention to detail ... there is no other way (I AGREE!!!!)
- To come ... unified communications ... making calls from Blackberry through enterprise PBX's while in the office for example
Wrap up panel
- For app developers: make money with your core value proposition ... add to it with advertising revenue. Few startups will win with an ad only mode (and if that IS your model, justify it with lots of CPM's, not just hopes of CPM's)
- Ad firms that are winning are focused on carrier deals
- VCs looking for disruptive technologies and disruptive business models. Think "If one carrier has it and another one doesn't, the second one will lose"
- If you are building a feature, approach angels and look for quick exit. If you are building a business, look for VC funding. Opportunities are looking to be harvested in a 3 to 7 year time frame.
- Go hard and get first mover advantage
Now that Mobile World Congress (MWC) has wrapped up (February 16th through 19th), and all the "Cafe con Leche" caffeine fueled conversations are complete, all that is left is to try to make sense of it all ... with 50,000 (ish) attendees and 8 trade show halls at Fira Barcelona, including the meeting rooms where all the action was happening behind the scenes, there was LOTS happening. So in addition to the highlights (Mobile App Stores, 4G and LTE deployment, global mobile financial services, mobile social networking and content delivery, Mobile 2.0, plaftorms and the continued mobile fragmented ecosystem), how does one tune into all the mobile and wireless innovation that's going on?
Well, bnetTV.com's live reporting of MWC Barcelona, of course.
www.bnetTV.com has Calgary roots and is a big deal, frankly, with ten million (yes: 10,000,000) streams watched on a monthly basis. As I prepared to do my Mob4Hire.com interview in Barcelona, I thought I'd turn the tables and do a video interview with Michelle Sklar about what bnetTV is all about, and, since she's in the middle of the action, she also offers a great perspective on what's hot at MWC (they interviewed 250 companies at Barcelona!). Michelle is the VP Programming and Content Management at BNetTV, and directs / produces much of the content, and in her interview also mentions the new partnerships with the Yankee Group as well as Innovation China.
bnetTV serves up about 10,000,000 streams a month through an agreggation of about 150 partnership sites worlwide.
bnetTV is an internet broadcast company that covers high-tech shows around the world and publishes the video in bit size streaming formats. It's one of the smartest (i.e. it actually generates revenue) vertical video content ideas I've seen ... they're covering hot topics that get a lot of views, and make their money not only from a really cool advertising implementation that overlays ads on their videos, but also from contracting to shows like the Yankee Group's Mobile Internet World in Boston from Oct 21 to 23, which includes packaging the whole thing up on Conference DVD's. bnetTV.com includes four different channels: bnetTV, Urban Beat, Wireless Planet, and Marachino Misadventures and broadcast from all the important global technology tradeshows; CES, GSMA, CTIA Vegas, CommunicaAsia, you name it. Good stuff.
bnetTV is part of the Winmax Trading Group family: http://www.winmaxtradinggroup.com, and have recently announced the expansion of their New York facility.
They are rockin', and perfectly illustrate the notion that if you are in the mobile space in Canada, make sure you treat the whole world as your marketplace, because our fair nation is a very small portion of the trillion dollar industry.
Speaking of that ... last Canadian comment ... Hall 8 at MWC was home to the massive booths of handset and infrastructure manufacturers. Weird to see the very large, bankruptcy-filed Nortel booth, and sad to witness yet another nail in the coffin with Verizon's 4G announcement that snubbed Nortel.
Ok ... caffeine level is running low ... time for another Cafe con leche, Canadian style! Me mucho gusto!
Last week was an amazing time at Mobile World Congress Barcelona. While attendance was down to about 50,000, the mood was upbeat in a trillion dollar industry that continues to post good growth despite recessionary times. The congress still had all the key players making decisions (except Apple who made an obvious statement by not having a presence), without, as one attendee put it "all the clutter of people kicking the tires." With all the attention to app stores and revamped developer networks, mobile application developers are really starting to take centre stage; with the creme de la creme competing at the Mobile Monday Peer Awards.
Mob4Hire.com was up for two awards, the GSMA Top Innovator Award and the Mobile Monday Peer Award. Calgary based Mob4Hire came into the finals through the Mobile Monday Vancouver chapter, clearly representing the synergies that exist in the Pacific Northwest wireless space (which, of course, includes Seattle, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton). There were 146 companies in the global competition, with 20 moving to the final presentations in Barcelona.
www.babajob.com came in on the number one spot for the world MoMo peer award. "a truly inspirational idea, helping the poorest of the poor to find better paid jobs in their locality. A wonderful story well told."
Paul Poutanen from Mob4Hire presented at the awards, and came in second place, according to one of the jurors, Venture Beat's Matthaus Krzykowski : http://venturebeat.com/2009/02/16/mobile-peer-award-winners/
As Paul states, "Mob4Hire is a Web 2.0 company that's helping mobile developers cope with the fragmented mobile ecosystem ... we're super happy with the number two spot as it gives us great recognition, and we're also really happy a great mobile developer took the top spot."
Here's a follow up post about the MoMo awards with all the winners from the M.C. of the event, Bena Roberta from GoMo News:
http://www.gomonews.com/momo-peer-awards/
A few more blogs related to the event:
... and a bunch of great pictures of the event on FLICKR:
Mob4Hire was also in the blog buzz due to O2 Litmus's announcement of their Appstore and Mob4Hire partnership; as James Parton states: "O2 Litmus users will have the opportunity to earn hard cash for every application they test, via a ground breaking partnership with multi award winning Mob4Hire." http://www.ixplora.com/?p=3593. It came in with rave reviews; e.g. "O2 Litmus is Better than Apple AppStore"
Mob4hire is crowdsourced mobile application testing. [more]
As you probably know, "WiTec Alberta is an industry association focused on supporting the Wireless & Telecom industry in the Province of Alberta." They host a number of events, but just wanted to alert you to two upcoming ones:
a) March 6. WiTec Networking Breakfast at Ranchman's Club in Calgary from 7:30 am to 9:30 am. Only $25 (if you're a member, $35 if not, and well worth it for the local networking). Click here for full event details. Click here to go directly to registration.
b) April 16 & 17. WiTec Connections 2009 at the luxurious Banff Springs Hotel. This is a must attend event for the Western Canada wireless industry, and is shaping up to be two great days of jam packed agenda. Click here for the WiTec Connections 2009 website and registration.
WiTec Alberta is an industry association focused on supporting the Wireless & Telecom industry in the Province of Alberta. The aim of the... [more]
Techvibes is a sponsor of the Pacfiic Northwest Wireless Summit, www.pnwsummit.com, so I thought it'd be cool if I posted after both days events.
Today was the "Leadership Summit," with about 50 attendees from many different countries and cities (including Calgary ... ummm ... that was me), to talk about leadership, convergence, world-class performance and global opportunities ... in a continuiing effort to position Pacific Northwest as the Gateway to North American wireless and digital media markets. It was an invite-only event (which I happened to be so lucky due to my CEO title at Mob4Hire.com).
I actually think about the "Pacific Northwest" in this manner to include Calgary, frankly (and probably Edmonton if I thought hard about it) ... in addition to Seattle. The world is a big place, and regionally we're much stronger positioned together (such as MoMoVan hosting the Mobile Monday Conference in 2010). I'm surprised I don't see more of this thinking back in Calgary ... maybe I'll come across more Calgary people in tomorrow's conference. (I'm speaking on a Wavefront technology panel, tomorrow at 1:40 pm, by the way, so if you're at the conference, come say hi).
Ok, today's highlights ... in no particular order:
- First, gotta give props to Michael Bidu, Christine Chowaniec from WinBC and any others involved in this event; you can see that this is not a job for them (they do MoMoVan, too, fyi) ... it is a passion to make a great city greater ... and it happens because of people like them!
- Conference was a great combination of small and big companies, public and private, and gov't and education
- In lean times, focus on your main differenentiator ... do your "one thing," really well
- I liked Anshu Agarwal (Keynote Systems), positioning on mass adoption of mobile applications covering the spectrum of entertainment (movies on demand, digital distribution, media sharing), socializing (friend finder, etc...) and concierge (appt scheduling, shopping assistance, driver licenses auto updating) ... thinking 2007 was the start (with iPhone joining the then limited smartphone selection), to 2009 with "cloud computing" applications moving to 2020 when the "personal mobile assistant" leads to mass adoption. He likened it to the same timeline of broadband adoption, which started in 1995 and by 2007 is pretty well ubiqutous. In short, the time to invest in mobile applications is NOW.
- Dr. Gerri Sinclair (Executive Director, Centre for Digital Media) gave a passionate speech about media convergence, and offered up a Telefonica view of the future which includes a seamless experience no matter what screen you are using (PC or mobile). If you haven't checked into the Centre for Digital Media, you should ... looks like an awesome institution.
- Convergence can mean a couple different things: getting all our appliances into one device, getting our content delivered to us no matter which device we're using ... the panel cautioned that the old model of selling franchise's to us (and making us buy content more than once), such as music songs, ringtones, videos on DVD, streaming videos, games is going to end at some point as consumers get fed up (no really, I've enjoyed buying the album, cassette tape, CD, and MP3 of my favorite songs over the years).
- In the "world-class performance panel," I liked the thought that productivity tools in this stage of mobile application development is an important piece of the puzzle (did someone say Mob4Hire? :)
- Regarding V.C., the dark and gloomy cloud over all our heads, ... there is still money out there, but Canada is starved for it. Canadian startups go looking for $500K ... the same start up in the valley looks for $5M. The Canadian gov't figures we've got a V.C. deficiency of tens of millions of dollars ... it's really more in the billions
- Steve Morley, Former VP Technology, Qualcomm, was awesome ... I won't give you his verbatim, but more or less, "Vancouver is a wireless hub" in North America and to start thinking BIG and acting BIG. Believe in yourself ...
- In the Global opportunities panel, Dr. Wang Jing, Secretary-General, TD-SCDMA forum in China gave an enlightening look at 3G adoption in China ... in short, within 3 to 5 years, China is going to be HUGE ... there is roughly $550B U.S.D. being spent on 3G infrastructure over that time frame.
- The always entertaining Tony Fish from London (who LOVED Grouse Mountain the day before) mentioned that "Europe is not a unified market. Mobile is very different in each country." And, did you know that 41% of all data on the iPhone actually comes side-loaded through Wi-Fi, not over wireless, and not surprisingly, 90% don't know about it (or even care for that matter)
- Last but not least, keep your eyes on Wavefront ... http://www.wavefrontac.com/ ... some very cool announcements coming!
Ok, that's it for tonight ... I'll close with a quote from Don Fast, Deputy Minister of Technology, Trade and Economic Development for British Columbia, who also closed the day 1 summit: "Wireless is one of the most important sectors of our economy" ... with the co-operation I see between gov't, public and private companies, I suspect it will become even more important in the trillion dollar global industry!
You'd have to have your head under a rock for the past six months not to know that the housing industry in North America is in a terrible state. The ripple effect touches those that build houses, renovate houses and supply products such as windows, carpets, siding, cabinets, counter tops, etc..., all of whom are struggling with the one thing that will help differentiate them and upsell their existing clients: marketing.
Enter Calgary based RenoWorks.com. I had lunch today at the fabulously new Flatiron restaurant on Barlow Trail, with CEO, Doug Vickerson, who shares many passions of mine, not the least of which seems to be a voracious appetite for coffee.
RenoWorks has been around for some time, but it's story for the last couple of years has been centered around selling a way-cool desktop application that shows the user what the aforementioned window, carpet, siding cabinet, counter top, etc... would look like in a "2.5 dimensional" model, helping the home owner make much more informed decisions.
The net effect is that RenoWorks can increase sales of said products substantially; I read one case study that showed closing rates increasing from 8% to 36%. A 2.5D picture is worth a thousand words, apparently.
For those in the housing industry, the recession hits hards; especially to those who were used to sitting back and simply answering the phone to take orders. Now they have to work harder, or in the case of Renoworks, work smarter, on their marketing. The latest version of RenoWorks Pro is available on their website, www.renoworks.com.
Renoworks has a major customer, Home Hardware, and in total they've shipped over 100,000 software packages. Doug says the company has been re-tooling their software architecture to release an browser-based Saas version in the coming year, at which point, scaling operations will become much easier across North America.
RenoWorks provides home design software and web solutions for the home building/remodeling industry and retail environment. Our software and web... [more]
Last Wednesday night, I went to the Mobile Monday Vancouver (MoMoVan) Christmas Party at The Mill Marine Bistro on the Seawall in Coal Harbour. Mobile Monday is an informal grassroots event that happens around the world on the first Monday of every month for Mobile Application Developers, Carriers and connected individuals, and includes industry talk, techie talk and lots of beer.
MoMoVan's site: www.momovan.com
MoMoCalgary's site: www.mobilemondaycalgary.ning.com
Mobile Monday global site: www.mobilemonday.net
Click here to see Flickr Photo's of the MoMoVan event: http://flickr.com/photos/roland/sets/72157611086497524/
Weird though; the MoMoVan holiday event was on a Wednesday ... so, you're wondering ... "are they changing the name to MoWeVan?" No, silly, the event was on Wednesday to accommodate the travel schedules of Jari Tammisto, CEO of Mobile Monday Global and Lars Cosh-ishii, founder of the most successful chapter in the world, MoMoTokyo.
While there was plenty of beer and technical talk (one of which involved sustained personal mapping as the future killer mobile app), this MoMoVan event was more political in nature. Deservedly so ... the Assistant Deputy Minister from Western Economic Development was there (Gerry Salembier), and it was kicking off two days of final preparations about bringing the Global Mobile Monday event to Vancouver in May, 2010, which included a tour of the Vancouver Convention Centre and meetings with top executives from the industry, Wavefront, BC Innovation Council, Vancouver Economic Development Commission, Tourism Vancouver, Vancouver Convention & Exhibit Center, Dept. of Foreign Affairs, and Western Economic Diversification.
With 125,000 members worldwide, MoMo is a big deal in the global mobile industry, and getting this event is the crown jewel .. it would see ~2,500 mobile application developers visit Vancouver in the first ever North American MoMo global event.
I received an email from Michael Bidu, Executive Director of WinBC (and a founding member of MoMoVan) ... the visit with Jari and others was successful, and moving forward to the official announcement in Barcelona in February. While it's not 100% guaranteed (it ain't official, until it's official!), things are looking really good.
On a related note, I was extremely excited to represent the newly christened MoMoCalgary chapter, and for us to provide regional support for MoMoVan. Newly christened is a understatement ... Jari was kind enough to sign our chapter agreement at the party at 7:16 pm, making MoMoCalgary the 71st chapter!
I'd like to shout out to the other founding members from Calgary who met last Monday (Dec. 8), at Kit's on 16th Ave for the first time to outline the Chapter's Charter (and, yes, it includes beer): John Carpenter (KnowledgeWhere), Brian Macintyre (Telus), Trevor Doerkson (MoboVivo.com), Stephen Nykolyn and Marc Wachmann (GrowWireless.com) and Robert Knight, Paul Poutanen and myself (Mob4Hire.com). Calgary has a thriving mobile scene and, like all Mobile Monday chapters, it's only as good as the members make it ... so we hope to see you out!
MoMoCalgary's first public meeting will be held on Monday, January 12th at Kit's on 16th Ave NW at 6:00 pm.
Please register for MoMoCalgary at our website: www.mobilemondaycalgary.ning.com ... let's kick it off!
I first posted about Mob4Hire last January, after meeting President and Founder, Paul Poutanen, at an Industry Event in Calgary. I became an advisor for the firm ... we stayed in touch; I watched Mob4Hire.com launch, get proof of concept, get paying customers and finally, like all Killer Startups, reach the point where they need to scale. So, Paul and the CFO, Robert Knight, approached me ... one thing led to another and I accepted their offer to join Mob4Hire and become CEO.
I'm already on my third cup of steaming joe today (a triple shot skinny vanilla latte, I might add) ... all wired up on caffeine, and I think to myself, "Self ... this is absolutely the most narcisistic post I've written." And, to prove it, I thought the best way to approach this is to have a Question/Answer session with myself. :)
More Mob4Hire info: www.mob4hire.com and www.mob4hire.blogspot.com.
Q: Congrats on the CEO job at Mob4Hire. The last we heard, you were working with CurveDental.com as CMO. Why the change?
A: Curve has a great opportunity ahead of them; their Saas software for the dental industry is revolutionary and going to cause a lot of disruption to the status quo. For me, accepting the position at Mob4Hire was a personal decision to stretch my career as a CEO as well as carve out a niche in an ever-opportunistic and seemingly recession proof mobile space, which is kinda like the wild west at this point. I still greatly respect the team at Curve, their CEO Matt Dorey, what they're doing, and I'll continue be in touch with them.
Q: What does Mob4Hire do?
A: Mob4Hire is crowd-sourced mobile application testing and market research. Testing for mobile application developers is a real pain. The ugly truth is that applications don't work seamlessly across multiple platforms on multiple handsets (there's about 25 different O/S's and technology platforms and arguably more than 12,000 different handsets). Even worse, software that works perfectly on a phone in New York may fail on the same phone in London. Traditionally, developers had to incur great expense to buy all the handsets on their client's carrier network (there are 800+ networks worldwide), subscribe to the phone service, and, in many cases, have staff travel to test their software in market, especially if it's a GPS location based app. Mob4Hire offers a much more logical, elegant and cost-effective solution. Developers post test plans and market research projects on Mob4hire and people from around the world bid on them; once accepted the tester follows through with test results using their existing in market cell phones. Mob4Hire can deliver testing results for approximately 1/10th the cost and about 1/5th the time.
Q: Why do you think Mob4Hire is a good business?
A: Unlike a lot of tech startups, especially in the crowd-sourcing space, Mob4Hire solves a real and big problem which we can monetize; we take a small fee % on each accepted bid. So, it actually has a sound business foundation. Secondly, the business scales; not only is it a big problem right now, it's going to become an even bigger problem as the marketplace becomes more fragmented. Bigger problem = more opportunity. Further, right now our revenue stream is based on a test bidding model, but we also have some additional services such as market research and focus groups that we'll be rolling out over the next two years that provide extra value to developers that we can monetize.
Q: How is the problem getting bigger?
A: I'm glad you asked that. Applications are the future of the mobile industry. Most of the historic growth that wireless carriers have experienced has been through handset sales and voice. However, markets are become saturated; for example, there's enough handsets sold for 88% of the population in the U.S.. In Singapore, this number is 114% (a lot of people have 2 handsets) ... Finland is 130%. Handset sales have, in fact, declined by 1% from 2007 to 2008. So, the future growth of carriers is going to come from applications and data services. That's why we see a collective $360M in VC funding announced from RIM, Apple, Nokia and Google ... they know what's at stake and are trying to become the platform of choice. It's estimated that the number of application developers will grow from about 100,000 to 400,000 in 2013.
Q: How do you know testers will want to join and do the work?
A: Well, we don't need every single person in the world with a cell phone to join. Just enough to provide enough handsets for enough carriers in enough countries to be a real test bed for developers. The two primary reasons to join: "I get paid to use my cell phone" and "I get to try out new software and technology" have resonated well ... we already have over 1,600 registered handsets for 189 carriers in 75 countries. And, we're in the process of launching a few developer networks, including O2 Litmus in the U.K.
Q: Explain a little more about your O2 Litmus contract
A: O2 is launching their new developer network O2 Litmus, which puts together thousands of developers with thousands of O2 early adopters, all branded as O2, with the backbone architecture using Mob4Hire as the "crowd-sourced micro-payment platform." So, O2 solves a big problem of both quality and quantity of applications, with very little investment, by turning their customers into virtual product managers ... the developers are happier and the users get more software they're willing to pay for. We make money with our service fee on all the testing transactions, so we expect developer networks to be one of our biggest sources of revenue.
Q: What's your first six months look like?
A: Well, first, take care of the customer ... that's the basis of any great business ... making O2 and our developers successful is the primary goal. However, my biggest fear is that we won't be able to scale fast enough to meet the demand and opportunity. First things first, we'll be raising some capital, so if you know anybody looking for a can't miss opportunity, let me know! Secondly, we'll be investing in recruiting testers and putting some better technology around the Q/A process to ensure great testing quality. Lastly, we'll be talking with more developer networks about private labeling Mob4Hire for their own developer relationships.
Q: So, you're looking to raise capital ... isn't it going to be hard to do that in this economy?
A: A good friend said to me last week, "There's never a bad time to invest in good people with good ideas." From our conversations thus far, it seems that many investors have moved to a cash position and therefore may be even more liquid and looking for opportunities. But, it is true that casual investors have tightened up their belts and experienced angels will be sifting over their opportunities even more carefully. We've got proof of concept. Paying customers. And, good contracts in hand. Our business model stacks up favorably against other opportunities, so I welcome that scrutiny. Ultimately, it won't take a lot of investment to make Mob4Hire a homerun since the business will scale so well, and the potential upside is very attractive.
Q: How do people get hold of you?
A: Email: stephen@mob4hire.com
Q: Thanks .. best of luck.
A: Thank you! As my Daddy once said ... "I'm a great believer in luck, and the harder I work, the more of it I have."
Ok ... that's it for my narcissistic pseudo-Q/A for now. :) Just as Techvibes readers have been following my journey in Calgary over the last year as I looked for a new career, now that I'm immersed in this new direction, you can expect my blog posts to start having more mobile content.
Mob4hire is crowdsourced mobile application testing. [more]
I'm a little tardy with this post, but I've been doing my new job for the last couple of weeks (CEO of Mob4Hire.com) ... which I'm tres excited about but extra busy; anyway better late than never, my Daddy always says.
On October 30, I went to the latest CTI Technology Showcase and Open House event called "Tech Lounge." Billed as "one of the best business networking events in Calgary," it didn't disappoint, with both floors of CTI filled to the brim with a who's who in the Calgary tech sector.
Instead of droning on endlessly about all the various companies, which you wouldn't read anyway, I thought I'd make this more of a "socialite" type page you find in the middle of the City section of your local paper. Call me a local tech paparazzi :) I only got a small percentage of the event, but it represents the excitement in the air and the breadth of the Calgary tech industry. Enjoy!
latah,
Stephen
Calgary Technologies Logo projected on the Floor
Kudos and thanks to the tech community partners and supporters
Terry Sydoryk and Paul Uppal from ActiveConversion.com
Marc Wachmann from Grow Wireless / Redwood Technologies, Derek Ball from Tynt.com and Paul Poutenan, President and Founder, Mob4Hire.com (crowd sourced mobile application testing)
On the right, James Hildebrandt, head psyko of psyko audio labs (www.skyoaudio.com) ... makers of killer surround sound headphones
A shout out to the groovy sounds at CTI TechLounge: Rick Climans Jazz Group
Amit Jhas, Kristen Zacharias, and David Reese from UTI Technologies
Julie Gregg and Gioconda Peria from The United Way ... www.calgaryunitedway.org ... all good industries need to support the community!!!
Michael Sikorsky, CEO of Cambrianhouse.com and Terry Ross from www.icore.ca
Tim Griffin, CEO of www.userful.com; make 10 desktop computers from 1 PC
Greg Harasym from New Energy Corporation; they can put small electric turbines in small rivers and water sources almost anywhere; extremely innovative and green!!!
Ron Theile, President, and Rene Smid, Program Manager of www.digitalalberta.com
Jeremy Greene (Evoco.com), Paul Poutenan (mob4hire.com), Trevor Doerksen (Mobovivo.com), Will Krisi (deltaeffects.com), Scott Valentine (Mobovivo.com)
Toni Guffei from Ratio Marketing at the CCAT booth. Make sure you register for the December 4th, CCAT Christmas Bash with Paul Vickers speaking: www.ccat.org
CTI was full of entrepreneurs at the TechLounge Event
Cameron Prockiw, Cornerstone Technologies and Stephen Nykolyn, www.redwoodtechnologies.com and www.growwireless.com
I'm at the Under the Radar (UTR) conference at the Microsoft Campus in Mountainview this morning, watching lotsa presentations of really smart Mobile startups present their companies to the local VC and Angel Community, as well as mobile carrier reps and other developers. You can watch it stream live all day from CNET, if you're so inclined.
One of the companies presenting is Calgary's Mob4Hire, who announced it's new contract with the U.K. O2 Litmus Developer Network this morning at the conference. Mob4Hire is also newly listed on Motorolla's Fast Track Partner Page.
I first blogged about Mob4Hire crowd sourced mobile application testing business model last January, and it looks like the business is well on the way. Since then they've reached 1,300 registered handsets on 139 carriers in 58 countries worldwide, in addition to their developer network contracts.
Ok, coffee break ... my caffeine level is on 1/8th empty ... time to fill up and schmooze with the other UTR attendees!
Mob4hire is crowdsourced mobile application testing. [more]
