Panel Preview- Roadmap for the Tech/Mobile/Telecom/Media: Top Entrepreneurs Reflect
On Tuesday, I will be part of the NYEW panel “A Roadmap for the Tech/Mobile/Telecom/Media Sectors: Top Entrepreneurs Reflect.”
It is a perfect topic and promises to generate a lively discussion. I have lots of Silicon Valley tech start-up experience and some Fortune 50 Telecom experience – but for reasons that will become obvious I will focus on mobile. Mobile changes everything and we are just beginning to realize it. What interests me most is how profoundly mobile phones are changing the way we work.
I started cc:Sync[www.ccSync.com] to capitalize on the huge opportunity to provide services to an increasingly mobile workforce. My co-founder, Don Price, and I met at Avaya where he was a CTO and I ran the On-Demand Group. At Avaya, we responded to the explosion of mobile phone use with “mobile integration” initiatives. But these missed the point. Integrating mobile phones into the PBX doesn’t help mobile executives: mobile phones have rendered the PBX irrelevant. We no longer take our calls through corporate trunks. We rarely check our corporate voice mail. Increasingly we don’t even reliably check our corporate email.
We now use mobile phones for all our calls. And, even if our company is paying the bill (hell, even if they bought the phone) we consider it ours. We use it, manage it, download the apps we want and turn it off when we like. We have incredible control over how, when and to whom we connect and special new powers – like texting.
There is something magical about text messaging. We can now find and communicate with people instantly, privately and without really interrupting them. No wonder we text more than we call. We text 2.5B times a day. Texting has even finally made its way to the corner office with some 80% of executives using text for work. But there is a lot more text can do for business.
Our initial offering, cc:Sync Text Groups, uses SMS to let a group of coworkers have a real-time text conversation. Everyone gets every message and anyone can send a message. It works with the native text application on any phone, through any carrier, anywhere in the world – no download required. It supports mobile email for Blackberry users. It is private and secure: only group members can get the messages and every message is authenticated. The groups are managed with the cc:Sync web application which also offers access to logged conversations.
cc:Sync is one of a new generation of services which capitalize on emerging “real-time” mobile and web technologies. It’s a very good time to start a business. Come to our panel and we can talk more about it.
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About the Blogger:
Chris is the Founder and CEO of cc:Sync, a service that provides groups of mobile and non-mobile coworkers real-time short messaging that is instant, private and continuous – plus one-click conference calling . Prior to cc:Sync, Chris was the EVP of Business Development at LiveOps, Inc. the leading provider of virtual and distributed call center services. There he was responsible for corporate strategy, indirect sales channels, and overall expansion. Chris joined LiveOps from Avaya where he was Vice President of the Avaya On Demand Business Unit. Chris was also President and CEO of Driveway Corporation, a leading provider of cloud storage. At Driveway, Chris built a business that served 8 million individual users and delivered hosted services that were integrated into many of the leading web sites including microsoft.com, macafee.com, lycos.com, and schwab.com. He also held senior positions at Fabrik Communications, Inc., and Farallon Computing, Inc.
Chris received his B.S. Degree in Engineering with an emphasis in Control Systems from the University of California, Davis.
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