Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Clickatell CEO Pieter de Villiers from South Africa (Part 1)

This is a terrific story of a South African team of entrepreneurs who have provided tremendous thought leadership in mobile chat commerce and have built a great company.

Along the way, they raised money from Sequoia Capital and have achieved (unverified) Unicorn status. The beauty is that this is not a glorified Unicorn built out of financial engineering but one that is firmly rooted in strong revenue growth.

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Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Corbett Drummey, CEO of Popular Pays (Part 1)

This discussion explores the evolution of influencer marketing and how brands are working with content creators to gain credibility and leverage.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to Popular Pays.

Corbett Drummey: I’m the CEO and Co-Founder of Popular Pays. We started in Chicago and did a stint out in YCombinator and then moved back afterwards. Popular Pays is a software for collaborating with content creators and influencers.

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Todd Greene, CEO of PubNub (Part 1)

Connected devices are creating very interesting opportunities for new types of businesses. Read on for more insights.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by having you introduce yourself as well as PubNub to our audience.

Todd Greene: I am a multi-time entrepreneur. PubNub is a company that I helped start as one of the two co-founders. It was a side project for me until 2012 but full-time for my co-founder, Stephen Blum, who ran the company. In 2012, we raised our first angel round. PubNub is an interesting company. The best way to think about it is the infrastructure needed by developers for software that powers real-time experiences. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Ted Murphy, CEO of IZEA (Part 1)

Influencer marketing and Content marketing are both big pillars of new media marketing. This discussion delves into those fields.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to IZEA.

Ted Murphy: I’m the Founder and CEO of IZEA. IZEA operates an online marketplace that connects creators – everything from journalists to bloggers – with brands for both sponsorships and content opportunities. One half of our business is helping brands produce content that may live on their blog or YouTube channel. The other half is amplifying content through the use of influencers. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Craig Powell, CEO of Motus (Part 1)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with introducing our audience to Motus as well as yourself.

Craig Powell: I’m the President and CEO of Motus. Motus is a company that serves mobile workers who drive for work. In that, we have the most accurate mobile enterprise solution for fairly and accurately reimbursing employees who drive more than 3,000 miles for work. We’ve been in existence since the early 2000’s and underwent a rebranding in 2013, which was the time I arrived with several other senior leaders.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us a bit about how this works. What is the usage model? Architecturally, how is this structured?

Craig Powell: We service both large and small companies that have large distributed sales forces that drive non-specialty vehicles for work. What I mean by non- >>>

5 Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social

Mobile devices, especially smartphones, are growing their footprints at an unprecedented scale. Alongside, the mobile app proliferation is gaining tremendous adoption. At the same time, social media is profoundly changing all aspects of business and social communication. The following industry leaders guide us through the developments in Mobile and Social, as well as offer suggestions for new venture opportunities.

• Rob Chamberlin, Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer of DataXoom – This conversation highlights how businesses overlay mobile virtual networks on top of wireless carrier networks for specific use cases.
• Christopher Dean, CEO of Swrve – This discussion delves into the depths of what can be tracked and what is being tracked in maximising the impact of mobile apps in industries like travel and hospitality, retail, gaming, etc. It’s a very good view into predictive and analytics-based targeting, real-time actions based on specific business goals, and the related domain. Very interesting conversation!

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Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Rob Chamberlin, Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer of DataXoom (Part 1)

This conversation highlights how businesses overlay mobile virtual networks on top of wireless carrier networks for specific use cases.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with some introduction to yourself as well as DataXoom and introduce our audience to the context of this call.

Rob Chamberlin: I’m the Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer of DataXoom. We’re a multi-carrier, data-centric MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator). We have wholesale partnerships with three of the largest four US wireless carriers. We target and work wth business customers only, and connect those customers to the mobile Internet. At a high level, our value proposition is a single platform from which to manage your wireless users across carriers with one bill to control all of that in terms that are quite business friendly.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s understand this in a bit more detail. You said you are catering to business customers who are creating these Mobile Virtual Networks. What are the use cases? Why are they doing that? >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Christopher Dean, CEO of Swrve (Part 1)

This discussion delves into the depths of what can be tracked and what is being tracked in maximising the impact of mobile apps in industries like travel and hospitality, retail, gaming, etc. It’s a very good view into predictive and analytics-based targeting, real-time actions based on specific business goals, and the related domain. Very interesting conversation!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to Swrve.

Christopher Dean: I’m the CEO of Swrve. Swrve is a mobile engagement platform based in San Francisco with offices around the world. We deliver everything that a brand needs to be successful on a mobile app. As the world is transforming and moving to more and more mobile experiences, brands need to >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Jason Wallis, CTO of Mozu (Part 1)

Mozu is a line of business within Volusion, one of the key small business e-commerce platforms that we have covered extensively in the past. Mozu caters to mid-market retailers. Jason discusses the trends he is seeing in that space.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to Mozu and yourself for some context.

Jason Wallis: Mozu is a modern commerce platform that has entered the market a couple of years ago. We’re a cloud platform designed to streamline and simplify the process of retailers adequately serving commerce needs that their consumers expect. We’re the first platform to be built since the mobile revolution was brought on by modern smartphone platforms. I’m the CTO of Mozu. I have been with Mozu since its inception and since we started on this journey to bring this platform to retailers. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Ryan Golden, CEO of Moasis (Part 1)

This discussion delves into location based mobile advertising optimization, an emerging arena that will likely grow substantially.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to Moasis and yourself.

Ryan Golden: I’m the co-founder and CEO of Moasis. We provide in-flight location optimization. We discover location opportunities for brand marketers and ad agencies at scale and what we do is we continuously optimize by adjusting the content and ads within location, based on results to increase effectiveness. We believe location is a critical layer in bringing context and relevancy to real time.

Sramana Mitra: Fantastic. Let’s double-click down on customers. What customer segment are you after? >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Stephanie Newby, CEO of Crimson Hexagon (Part 1)

Image and video analytics are at the frontier of mobile and social interactions currently. Read on to understand the use cases and open problems.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to Crimson Hexagon.

Stephanie Newby: I’m the CEO of Crimson Hexagon. We are a big data, social media analytics company. We actually have a market leadership position in our market, which is very exciting. The reason is we have three things that’s very compelling from a customer’s point of view. Number one we have a huge base of data set of over 800 billion posted social media data since we started in this business, which was in 2008.

What that enables our customers to do is mine all of this data to get insight from consumers about what they’re talking about whether it’s a brand, or a customer service issue. Secondly, we have very deep data science that is patented and protected and therefore, we have aspects of our technology that enables customers to have the flexibility to ask any question of social media. It could be, “What are people saying about last year’s Super Bowl campaign?” >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Josh Koppel, Founder of ScrollMotion (Part 1)

Sales empowerment tools are getting richer by the day. This discussion explores the trends.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with introducing our audience to yourself and ScrollMotion.

Josh Koppel: I’m the Founder and Chief Creative Officer of ScrollMotion. ScrollMotion is a platform that lets any company create highly interactive content on an iPad for things like sales, training, and communications.

Sramana Mitra: What’s special about the platform?

Josh Koppel: In the past, it’s been very hard for companies to take advantage of the power of the iPad for sales in a truly revolutionary way. People have been able to move around flat content and maybe open up some PDFs and PowerPoint but have never really able to delve into the experience of touch. That, to us, is truly transformative and truly revolutionary in terms of talking and having a conversation with somebody. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Mike Ryan, CTO of Mobile Labs (Part 1)

Mobile devices, especially smartphones, are growing their footprints at an unprecedented scale. Alongside, the mobile app proliferation is gaining tremendous adoption. Mike discusses testing challenges against the backdrop.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as the company.

Mike Ryan: I’m the CTO at Mobile Labs. Mobile Labs is an aspirational name because we wanted to think about all aspects of mobile application development and testing. We started in 2011. I’ve been here for about three and a half years now. Prior to this, I worked for a software emulation company in California for about nine years. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Qstream CEO Duncan Lennox (Part 1)

Qstream uses insights on how the human brain learns to power sales empowerment and training. It’s an interesting concept that could be applied to many other use cases, and it seems like a ripe arena for entrepreneurial experimentation.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with introducing our audience to you as well as Qstream.

Duncan Lennox: I’m the co-founder and CEO of Qstream. Qstream is a spin-off from Harvard Medical School. We provide, what we call, a sales performance platform to help organizations manage and improve the capability of their sales force.

Sramana Mitra: Give us a bit more color on this value proposition. Double-click down on some of your customers and tell us how, specifically, are they using your product. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Clara Shih, CEO of Hearsay Social (Part 1)

Social media is dramatically changing sales and marketing. In this interview, we double-click down on the insurance and financial advisory sales functions. Clara Shih guides us through the developments in this field, as well as offers suggestions for new venture opportunities.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with introducing our audience to you as well as to Hearsay Social.

Clara Shih: I’m the CEO and Founder of Hearsay Social. We’re a 200-person enterprise software company based in San Francisco with offices across North America, Europe, and Asia.

Sramana Mitra: What is Hearsay’s primary business?
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