Four years ago — when the iPhone and iPhone apps were just a twinkle in Steve Jobs’ eye — three Boston-based Venture Capitalists had the courage to invest in Allan MacKinnon and his vision of a new app development platform for mobile phones. These VCs had the courage to bet that mobile apps would be the success that they have become, as well as the courage to back Allan’s contrarian approach to create a platform – called Nemo — that would let developers write a mobile app once and have the app run on over 90% of the phones that people have in their pockets.
With the development of Nemo complete, we’ve decided the best way to enter our “commercialization” phase is as part of a larger, established company — either a hand-set manufacturer, or a company that supplies infrastructure to mobile carriers.
So why will it take courage for a VP at one of these companies to buy Everypoint? It’s not because of product risk; testing proves that Nemo delivers on Allan’s promise; with Nemo you can create feature phone apps with stunning iPhone-quality graphics and built-for-mobile notification / push / synchronization. And Nemo’s design results in ultra low power consumption, critical for mobile devices. As noted in this post, we’ve astonished VPs on how quickly remarkable apps can be developed.
No, it’ll take courage to buy Everypoint because the buyer will have to admit that Allan’s decision on how to solve the “write once / run anywhere mobile app” problem – by turning the problem on it’s head – was a decsion that their own developers missed. At this point NIH is the only hurdle that remains.
We are having meaningful conversations with multiple players in the mobile space. We’re showing them our wares and they like what they see. Now we need one of them to show us that they he/she has the courage to overcome NIH.
My time at Everypoint will, once we conclude a deal, come to an end. I’ll then be looking for my 11th interim CEO / COO role in the last 10 years.
30 June 2009 at 11:58 PM |
Hi Des,
I’ve been trying out the NDE for a month or so to develop simple apps, and so far – am impressed by the environment. I have a couple of concerns/queries though:
1. As distribution is OTA, how viable will it be for markets like India, where the GPRS usage / penetration is still v.low (amongst feature phone users) due to various reasons from cost-per-kb to awareness to connectivity etc etc. So when boutique development firms use nemo to develop their apps, it would be great if there are options to distribute them offline / through internet downloads.
2. When do you plan to release all the features to developers ? – the current NDE available for download does not have some critical functionalities like media layers, compile option etc.
- All the best to your team for a successful ‘commercialization’ phase !!
Regards,
FA.
1 July 2009 at 1:05 PM |
FA, thank you for your interest and comments. I’ve passed your email address along to our founder / CTO, Allan MacKinnon. He will answer your questions (and any more that may arise.) Thanks again.
10 July 2009 at 11:45 AM |
Hi Des,
Haven’t got answers to the queries yet…
Regards,
FA.
10 July 2009 at 2:57 PM |
FA — please email me directly via the Everypoint website and I can answer your questions!
Thanks,
-ASM