Interview with Ariel Poler of Textmarks
|
“TextMarks”:http://www.textmarks.com makes it very, very easy to do one-to-many or many-to-many communications via text messages. It enables this with text message alert lists and with keywords that users can text to the short code (41411) to receive up-to-date information that is relevant to them.
Ariel Poler has been starting Internet companies since 1994. His first company was I/PRO (web measurement) and then he started Topica (email communities) and now TextMarks. In between these projects he has helped other entrepreneurs – as an active board member. Some of the companies that he has been involved with include LinkExchange, Kana Software, Papilia, Bills.com and StumbleUpon. |
What gave you the idea for TextMarks?
I am a heavy SMS user but most of the information that was already available via SMS was “mainstream”. So I thought “wouldn’t it be great to enable the ‘long tail’ to publish via SMS?” Independently, I have always been frustrated by the poor experience of surfing the web from a cell phone (at least with every phone that I’ve had), so I thought it would be great to web information easily accessible via SMS.
What is your strategy for growth? How has your experience with other internet start-ups informed this?
We are still at a very early stage. We are “tweaking” the product and making sure that we have something that is compelling to lots of people before we focus on growing it. One of my takeaways from previous start-ups is that it is important to experiment and evolve products until they get some minimal level of natural traction. At that point, the focus should shift to making the product more viral.
What do you see as the most far-reaching impact of this service?
Thanks to always-on Internet access, we are now used to being “online” whenever we are at the office or at home. Yet most people spend significant time away from their computers and are thus offline. Practically everyone has a cell phone and every cell phone supports text messaging. We believe TextMarks can help people be online even when they are not on their computers.
Bonus: What was the first TextMark you created?
My first TextMark was LIARA, which shows the whereabouts of my sailboat. My most recent one (actually it was my wife who did this one) was CENA, which tells me what’s for dinner each night at home – so that I don’t eat the same for lunch.
Copyright © 2006 by Sonia Aggarwal