Mobatech – buy direct to your cell!
Michael Michelini
Monday, December 25, 2006
Mobatech, LLC
My time at Mobatech was also a life defining one, as here I worked directly with the founder of this company, Greg Schwartz. Now Greg and I met right out of college, Summer 2003, and we both had our eyes set to the sky. Needless to say, having this common determination on success, we hit it off – and he invited me to get involved, which I immediately did.

He had the product and software knowledge – I was more interested in the sales channels growth and marketing. That is funny, because I remember him pointing that out to me…and I reluctantly agreed. My whole life I had been told I’m good at math, I know computers, I’m too smart to go to business school – the nuns in my Catholic High School would tell me. My father being a civil engineer and this dot com bubble put the nails in the coffin – I was to be a techie. Then Greg, after graduating engineering school – points out to me that I should work on the sales and marketing of this high tech java cell phone software startup. Greg seems to have that gift of seeing someone’s strengths straight away, which I admire and am sure that attribute has aided in his continued successes.

So being appointed the Sales and Marketing “guy” at Mobatech, LLC – I quickly looked over past sales reports – looking for trends. Taking this internal data, I looked over the sales channels attributes, specifically Handango.com. Noticing they had highlighted those top ten most downloaded apps, I started realizing, if these had to be sales – or simply downloads….and yes, at this point in time the system took & featured the top ten downloaded apps – not purchased apps. Wheels turning…

New releases of these hot apps were on the horizon, as Mobatech was on the pulse of the customer’s demands. We were fully aware, Greg especially, of customer’s upgrade suggestions – and he was frantically working on getting all these requests together for Mobile Checkbook 2.0 – big release here! Now working with the Handango rep, we were able to keep the new version under the same profile as the 1.0 – thus keeping our total downloaded numbers for the public eye – as who really wants to be the first to buy an application- no one! Then we gave away our 2.0 to the existing 1.0 customers. I ran this, being the marketing guy, and thought this was the perfect way to build customer loyalty- why hit them with the extra charge? Of course a risk, but we decided they’d be overjoyed, reminded about our application, and also therefore spread the word to their friends! AND on top of this, had they just downloaded the update, it would count as another number for our popularity – genius!

I ran a few more of these campaigns, helped on some surveys, build a customer database, tapped some contact to get into the Verizon Wireless world – but as the months went by – I found my way to a new venture – e-commerce.

Greg and I remain dear friends, often feeling like the select few of our friends who actually have a passion – and a follow through – for startups. We have our regular dinners at corner diners in the city and chat about new technology and ventures – always like to pass new things by him that are on my mind