Monday, October 13, 2008
Interview with John Burry, MobUI
Redmond-based MobUI (www.mobui.com) develops mobile applications, and just announced that it has scored a round of funding, and acquired Action Engine. We sat down with John Burry, the firm's CEO and co-founder, last week ahead of its news today to get some insight into the company.
What does MobUI do?
John Burry: Myself and my co-founder came from Action Engine. We decided to take it to the next level with a new organization in July, focusing on next generation mobile experiences as we've seen with the launch of the iPhone, the upcoming launch of Google's Android, and as devices with higher resolution screens and more unique inputs. User expectations of what the mobile experience is, and mobile applications are changing dramatically. If you look at what runs on the iPhone, and what has been demonstrated by T-Mobile with Android, it's changed how you're interacting with devices. We've created a company, from the ground up, focused on creating a premium experience. We're focused on media brands as our customers, as they are the ones who need the premium experience foremost, because they aren't presenting dry information or a text presentation like current mobile apps. They're looking for dynamic, exciting experiences that reinforce their brands.
What kind of applications are you creating for these media brands?
John Burry: One example, which we are actually launching as we speak, is a group chat application for a media company--a top tier television channel. They are a household name brand which has quite a lot of consumer loyalty. This group application allows anyone to join into a chat room on their mobile device. We've taken the chat room on the desktop, and created a new way of interacting on a mobile device, which allows for that group experience and the excitement that occurs in a group. It runs on 116 different phones, and cross multiple carriers, and it's a pretty colorful experience when you play with it.
There seems to be a gold rush towards developing iPhone apps. Why the huge enthusiasm for developers for iPhone?
John Burry: The biggest thing in the iPhone is consistency. As you know, in the mobile world, when you develop a mobile application, you are challenged by all of the different profiles that we have to manage. There are different input methods, screen resolutions, speeds of processors, and memory constraints. Unless you develop for a specific phone, the application either sees a wide range of user experience between phones, or is watered down to create consistency, and isn't optimized. For the iPhone, it's just one platform. You know exactly what the user is going to see, and you have pixel-perfect placement of your application. The hardware is great, it's got an extremely fast processor, a very large screen, and an intuitive way to interact without having to deal with a stylus and up, down, left, and right. You can flick your fingers and it allows you to truly fly through the applications like it was a fluid. And, the hardware actually supports that type of experience. We know going into it, that what we code is what the user is going to see. We know that users can easily get access to our applications. If you've got an iPhone, you know exactly where to go, if someone lets you know about an application by word of mouth, to download that application. It's a great user interface experience, there is consistency, and developers have confidence when they develop what they are building that that is what the customer will see. It's exciting for developers across the board.
It used to be finding applications was quite difficult, how is this with all the thousands of applications appearing now on the iPhone?
John Burry. It's a great question. It's an interesting situation. The experience in mobile before, where you had various carriers and stores, was in most cases the stores appeared to be a ghost town with only a few applications being promoted, and tumbleweeds blowing by. There wasn't a case where individual developers were lost in the noise. With the iPhone App Store, just in a few months, there were thousands of applications available in the App Store -- some lightweight, some very significant, but what you've got to deal with as a developer is that you don't expect that users are going to drill down and look at every new app. You can't expect them to drill through every category top to bottom. So, you've got to go back to the basic fundamentals of development. An application must speak for itself, and it must be so well done that your users become evangelists. The App Store is a destination that users can get to, once they've found out about it. Your application must shine so brightly that users will want to look at it. Having the user become an evangelists is a model that is working well right now in the App Store, and is a model we take a look at with every product we build--making sure that product is good enough to make that happen.
Tell us about the acquisition of Action Engine and how this is all related?
John Burry: My co-founder, Brandon Albers and I were very excited to be at a new company, which was going in a different direction than Action Engine, but had complementary products. We were not trying to re-create Actoin Engine, were looking at opportunities in a direction that Action Engine hadn't chosen. When we started MobUI, we developed a relationship with Action Engine which was a complementary one. Within two weeks, we'd landed our first customer, with a significant sized project. The project actually had a dependency into Action Engine, because Action Engine was developing a product for the customers on a wide range of devices, and we were going to develop the iPhone version of the product as well. As we moved forward on our development and scoping of products, there were some changes happening at Action Engine, and by putting together the right numbers we were able to acquire Action engine and bring their technology into the fold of MobUI. We were also excited to be able to cherry pick the best of the Action Engine development team, and bring them to MobUI, and also secure their technology for our use.
John Burry: We gained all of the assets, but none of the liabilities. It's all upside, and no downside. In addition to the physical server and data center and IP, we also brought over products in production at Action Engine, from top tier customers. So we bring those relationships. We definitely want to support those products and are continuing to do so. It's not so much of a burden as an investment, and gives us the goodwill of those customers. When we mention we're going a different direction, when we started we did not want to compete with Action Engine. When we acquired the company, that's not a factor anymore. We're choosing not be to Action Engine version 2, or Action Engine rebranded, instead Action Engine had some specific intellectual property we wanted to apply to problems customers needed solved. We're using Action Engine's technology as one tool in the toolbox, which has many tools That's delighted customers who I have worked with for years at Action Engine. They love hearing now that there is this great technology from Action Engine available to you, but we're not going to try to shoehorn you into it. Together, we may decide the technology applies perfectly, but on this one we may take the team and instead create a unique solution for your problem, and possibly use the Action Engine libraries, or possibly not. We've got a whole new canvus, and its paying off dividends.
Finally, tell us a bit about the company funding--it looks like from a strategic partner?
John Burry: This is a fun story as well. What this is, is that one of our very largest projects happens to be for a company in the United States, and is rolling out on 11 million hansets--a music portal. We'll have an announcement on this shortly, but this partner was engaged with from the early states of starting MobUI. They asked us to build it, and went through a great deal of detail on the scale and scope of the project. The customer liked what we were doing, and decided to make a strategic investment in us as well. They like the way our team works, and the development process we use, which is quite unique in the mobile industry, and in the technical industry in general. They wanted to be able to amplify the output we have, and make sure their needs can be met by MobUI, because they're going to be turning on a fire hose. They didn't want to have to go to another vendor with their needs, so they made the investment. They came to us, told us they wanted to take it to the next level, and the relationship went forward from there. It's exciting to see, and an honor to have such a partner.
Thanks!