Following up on companies 1-5, here are 6-10.
COMPANY #6: Cubic Telecom
1 - The Elevator Pitch: Cheap international mobile calls from your phone.
2 - Reminds Me Of… long distance phone cards, fitted for the 21st century. In their words, do what telco what RyanAir has done to flying… pretty noble.
3 - Originality: They solve a simple need, so originality is not as important as need-solving here folks.
4 - Validation: they are already saving money for consumers, as the lad from Ireland presenting said: “we flatten the world.”
5 - Income vs. Capital Gain: This is a company that makes money by sucking money out of it.
6 - VC odds: Plenty of VCs are into wireless, but North American VCs might not be the best fit, they should focus on European or Asian VCs or look into VC arms of shops like Nokia. But since they shrink a market, I could see Josh Kopelman’s First Capital being interested, too. But it is a commodity market that over time will see the company being shrunk too.
7 - Exit Options: IDT, market cap of $800M, $600M in cash… natural fit. They did the phone card thing, they are now seeing that business shrink… this is a perfect fit.
8 - Bottom Line: Good presentation. Handled questions of the panel very well…
URL: http://www.CubicTelecom.com
COMPANY #7: Yap
1 - The Elevator Pitch: Instantaneous voice transcription for wireless devices.
2 - Reminds Me Of… VoiceSignal, well, that’s a lie, it didn’t remind me of VoiceSignal, but it reminded Ryan Bloch of VoiceSignal…
3 - Originality: VoiceSignal does something similar, apparently, but it was new to me.
4 - Validation: Well, with ringtones being so passé, telcos will need additional bells and whistles to boost revenue, though most are hard to penetrate, let alone get to include features.
5 - Income vs. Capital Gain: They’ve enabled their platform to run mobile and local ads, which is clever. I doubt the volume will be high enough to be substantial.
6 - VC odds: Nokia’s VC arm – and similar funds – should be all over this. The company is raising their first VC round.
7 - Exit Options: Local advertising and mobile advertising are markets that are getting many interested… so there won’t be a shortage of players looking to scoop this and integrate.
8 - Bottom Line: Let’s face it, a lot of what we text we don’t want to say out loud… of course, it’s a neat feature to have. The pitch should be more geared towards the general population, say you are driving around and want to instruct your phone to look for directions etc., this is something the company is doing.
COMPANY #8: Ceedo
1 - The Elevator Pitch: Taking applications from PC to mobile and then launch virtually on any PC.
2 - Reminds Me Of… Om mentioned a number have tried this via USB but this seemed new to me because it was very seamless.
3 - Originality: A lot of companies have attempted similar things but not in this way.
4 - Validation: Technically the beauty here is that you don’t need to sign partnership because it works via browsers and PCs, on any Windows OS to boot!
5 - Income vs. Capital Gain: The archetypical dilemma: if you charge for this, no one will use it, if you give it away, you won’t make money. Advertising is not really an option, it could be, but people using this are not going to embrace it as well.
6 - VC odds: The usual suspects, notably mobile VCs or the VC arms of telcos would be interested.
7 - Exit Options: Any one of the telco firms, or MSFT, because they can make this as an OS for wireless.
8 - Bottom Line: With so many companies embracing applications in the clouds – yet with broadband not quite being there yet – this could be a handy service for sure. But how many people would really trust leaving their remnants on any PC? The presenter does note that Ceedo leaves no trace, but I’m not sure users will know or buy that, so they should stress this.
URL: http://www.ceedo.com
COMPANY #10: Trutap
1 - The Elevator Pitch: Stay connected to online friends and bring social networks to mobile.
2 - Reminds Me Of… it might be hypocritical to say this, since we run so many different properties and applications ourselves, but there are way too many bells and whistles here. Still, in a mobile-mad country, this would take off.
3 - Originality: Nokia has something similar.
4 - Validation: not in Japan or South Korea, but in 210 countries… coming to US, but not yet, though they are in Beta with AT&T.
5 - Income vs. Capital Gain: Could see a Nokia competitor making a run for this. Like all things wireless, don’t expect a business model…
6 - VC odds: Nokia competitor should buy them, which would encourage a VC to step in.
7 - Exit Options: Any Nokia competitor.
8 - Bottom Line: Lots of features, better suited for an Asian or European exit, frankly, than US-based.
Panel comments sprinkled throughout company overviews. Also company #9 was Loudtalks but they seemed to have some technical glitches. The pitch was “Communicate without calls, IM without typos” so find out more on Loudtalks.com.
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