Interview with Cellfire

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It seems, at least based on the traction that I have received, 95% of ALL venture backed startup companies are based in northern California. I can’t seem to understand why I have such limited access to all of the start-ups in Los Angeles even though I am based here. So, it should come as no surprise that I spent last week, for yet another round of interviews, in northern California, primarily to continue my conversations with Cellfire for a business development opportunity. Cellfire as I have mentioned before after my “virtual” interview with recruiting firm Kindred Partners, is a red-hot start-up in the mobile couponing space with a $10MM B round of funding from venture capital firms, Menlo Ventures and Storm Ventures.

Ironically, I developed a mobile couponing business plan with my old business school roommate, AKA, Stephen “Gates” back in September of last year, though we had developed our model around a cell phone carrier agnostic framework, given the inherent difficulties of selling through to the mobile carriers. So naturally, I was very much interested in hearing about Cellfire’s consumer acquisition and marketing strategy and some of the data points that convinced them to develop a downloadable application for managing coupons.

I thoroughly enjoyed my meetings with Brent Dusing, CEO, Dwight Moore, VP Corporate Marketing and Dan Kihanya, VP of Consumer Marketing, all of whom conveyed a deep passion and sincere bullishness on the mobile couponing space. Though the majority of my time with Brent was really focused on my own professional experience, seeing as how it was an interview and all, Dan went into a great amount of detail surrounding Cellfire’s decision to build a downloadable software application in lieu of the sms based strategy Stephen and myself had developed for our mobile couponing platform. Dan had deep insight into the market and I walked away from our meeting far more convinved that Cellfire’strategy was the right call.

Cellfire has a high powered team from top to bottom, has ramped up sales efforts with tier one advertisers and a compelling strategy for consumer acquisition. The real question here is when, not if, consumers will change their current paper clipping behavior and embrace Cellfire’s mobile coupon technology.

June 26th, 2007