Big money has flowed to iPhone app startups that are helping people track the whereabouts of friends or find nearby restaurants, clubs or bars. The two most prominent players in the category right now are Palo Alto, Calif.-based Loopt -- backed by Sequoia Capital, NEA and others -- and Seattle-based Pelago -- backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Bezos Expeditions, etc.
Those are some of the biggest names in venture capital.
But a new entrant called Niftybrick Software -- a tiny bootstrapped company led by developer Mark Aiken -- is making some early progress with a new application called Hey Where are You? or HeyWay for short.
Using the iPhone 3G S's new push technology, HeyWay is a peer-to-peer system that allows people to post and discover the locations of family members or friends. I asked Aiken -- who is moonlighting on the project while he works as an engineer at a Seattle area company -- how it is different than Loopt or Pelago's Whrrl.
He said it does "a lot less," and that's the beauty of it.
"The iPhone taught users to expect well-crafted, easy-to-use applications that do one thing well and avoid clutter," said Aiken. "Whrrl and Loopt and Brightkite, and Google Latitude, and others, besides aim to do everything, and be on every device. As a result, they're taking a 'more is better' approach and piling on the features. We've had a lot of users tell us that they switched to HeyWAY from Loopt in particular because HeyWAY was simpler."
Aiken, who previously founded Mergelab, said he hopes to outmaneuver the heavily-funded rivals by moving faster and staying focused on the most important piece of the market.
The app -- which is currently free -- counts about 70,000 users. Not bad for a service, which was only introduced two weeks ago.
Aiken, who has a growing family on Capitol Hill, came up with the idea with his wife since they both were struggling to keep in touch given their hectic schedules.
Essentially, HeyWay allows a user to publish their location to another person. That means someone could easily indicate that they are picking up the kids in preschool or traveling in Peru.
"Recipients get an alert and a map showing your whereabouts," said Aiken. "You can also request other people's location; they get an alert asking whether they would like to send you back their current location."
Aiken admits it is a little crazy to enter such an intensely competitive market.
But he says the market is unproven and that some of the original players are still applying the "bubble formula" of "give-it-away-at-large-scale-and-figure-out-monetization-
Aiken said he's not a fan of that approach, and plans to start charging for a more enhanced location service soon.
"Quite possibly, this will be an utter failure," he says. "But unlike the 'go big or go home' venture model, we have little to lose and everything to gain by being the first to try new models."
Earlier today, I pointed out a study that indicated how venture capitalists have invested $102 million in iPhone app startups. But I also noted in that post that a lot of the iPhone app work going on right now is being done by independent developers with no outside capital.
It will be interesting to watch if a small upstart can rock the world of the bigger VC-backed companies.
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