Ben Fountain speaks to CEO of Bango, Ray Anderson - Resources - Q10 - Business Weekly

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Ben Fountain speaks to CEO of Bango, Ray Anderson

Written by Ben Fountain
Wednesday, 12 March 2008
"Profitability is very important to us at this stage in the business. After several years of investment in building our technology and systems and gaining an initial base of customers we are now in an exciting position as global leader." Bango delivers the technology that makes the mobile web simple for everyone by providing a common integration point for brands, businesses and individuals. This enables content providers to market, deliver and sell their products and services directly to mobile phone users on all networks worldwide.The world’s leading mobile operators partner with Bango to give their subscribers the widest choice of mobile content. Billing providers, search engines and advertisers are connected to a wide range of content providers through Bango. The newest product from Bango, Bango Analytics, was announced a month ago. This product enables a full understanding of marketing response and user activity that can be monitored to see what works and why with all forms of mobile advertising, mobile search engine optimisation, marketing campaigns and mobile site development. Bango Analytics measures the effectiveness of Google, Yahoo!, AdMob, JumpTap, Microsoft and the many other advertising and search marketing opportunities available on the mobile web. Ray Anderson, the CEO of Bango, is an entrepreneur and innovator, with experience in the industry spanning 20 years. He floated Bango in 2005, which he co-founded in 1999. In 1988 Ray established IXI- an early leader in the creation of the web. In 1993 this company merged with SCO and floated on NASDAQ. Before this, Ray co-founded Torch Partners, which he sold to CATSCO in 1984. Bango has offices in US, UK and Spain and is quoted on the London Stock Exchange (AIM:BGO). Learn more at www.bango.com 1) Can you walk us through what Bango does and how it does it? Bango is enabling content providers and businesses of all sizes, ranging from the very large, such as MTV, The Sun and GameLoft, to the very small, to quickly and easily engage with people via the mobile web in over 150 different countries. We provide anybody with a website with the tools and services to get mobile phone users to visit their website. The tools we provide also help them to analyse who is visiting and to collect payments from them – wherever they may be in the world. 2) Bango has been around for a while now. How has the company changed? Since we started in 1999 our strategy has remained consistent, but we had to change our emphasis to deal with slower than expected market growth, and the resistance of some mobile operators to change. Whilst the mobile operators put up barriers to accessing the mobile web, we continued to develop our technology. It was only from around 2004 that the more progressive mobile operators, such as Telefónica and Vodafone, started to adopt our vision of an open market. They gave us unique access to their billing systems to enable mobile web commerce, and that proved to be a critical factor in enabling our business to take off. As other operators have started to open up their web access, they have turned to Bango for help. In turn that has helped us provide a better service to our primary customers – the website owners – who use us to drive traffic to their sites and collect payments for them through the available billing systems. 3) How much importance do you place on profitability and when will it arrive? Profitability is very important to us at this stage in the business. After several years of investment in building our technology and systems and gaining an initial base of customers we are now in an exciting position as global leader. Profitability at this stage in the market’s development will mean we are in a much stronger position to retain our leadership as the market takes off. We have made good progress towards profitability during the year ending March 2008 and expect to reach break-even during the next financial year, ended March2009. 4) How much of a struggle was it to get the City – and the market more generally – to understand Bango’s technology and proposition? It was very difficult to explain to the financial markets. Few city investors had used the mobile internet; fewer still had accessed mobile websites. Fortunately we have a great roster of customers and partners that meant we gained product and business credibility. 5) Big things have been forecast for the mobile web in the near future, but that has been the case for a number of years now. Is there any chance this is another false dawn? Over the last six years things have steadily improved. The reason for optimism that a surge in growth is nigh is that the big internet movers and shakers: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, eBay are all starting to push mobile web usage and this coincides with the majority of mobile operators starting to open up access and cut access costs. 6) What excites you most about the mobile web? Its reach. It is available to everybody and it is almost always available. Add to that the simplicity of accessing the web from a mobile compared with the complexity of a learning how to set up and use the web on a PC and you can see why I’m excited about its potential. 7) What, if anything would you have done differently? I’d have spent less time and money on the activities I know with hindsight were a ‘dead end’. Many of the companies we worked with in 2000 to 2002 are no longer around. 8) Is there anything big in the pipeline at Bango? Big things will come from our rapidly growing customer base, and looking after those customers; we also expect to see interesting progress in developing markets such as Brazil and India. 9) How much of an effect will the iPhone have on the mobile web in general and your activities in particular? The iPhone has now been with us for about a year, and in that short time has gained almost a 1% share of mobile web traffic. That’s an amazing achievement. What’s more important, though, is that it has shown what can be done with a focus on making a few very basic features – which have been around for years – easy to use, and easy to understand. Apple has forced Nokia, LG, Motorola, SonyEricsson, Samsung and the other handset makers to review and renew their product strategy – and to focus on the user – as well as on their biggest customer, the mobile operator. 10) What three pieces of advice would you give to other budding tech entrepreneurs? Focus on doing one thing well. Keep costs down. 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