The other customer that I can announce is REI, the world’s largest outdoor retailer. We’ve started our cooperation by creating an iPhone app that supports their “Bike your Drive” campaign. It’s a fun and useful app that lets consumers track their bike rides, while estimating how many calories they burned, how much CO2 exhaust they saved, and how much money they kept in their pockets by leaving their car parked. People can also take pictures of their bike rides, and upload their recorded routes to EveryTrail.com.

Later this summer we will announce 2 large new customers, and more later this year.

GPS BN: Is it important to have a B2C business to sell in B2B in your field of operation?
JS: For us it’s very important for several reasons. The first is that our consumer site www.EveryTrail.com gives us insight and teaches us what consumers want and don’t want. We launch new features very frequently and learn quickly what works and what doesn’t. Since our 60,000 members are very vocal we are pretty good at predicting to our B2B customers what features their users will want. The second reason is that EveryTrail serves as a proof that our software not only scales and can handle high levels of traffic, but also meets the expectations of consumers. Our corporate customers have repeatedly mentioned this as one of the key reasons to select GlobalMotion. Finally, EveryTrail also serves as a great online customer acquisition channel: Two of our largest corporate customers were looking for a geo-social network solution like ours and found us by searching online. Since EveryTrail.com has strong organic search engine rankings, we pop up on top of search results pages for many queries, and that’s how several companies found and approached us.

GPS BN: if we look at the website functionalities, what are the recipes to make it sticky for the existing user and viral to reach non-users?
JS: The entire user experience is important. Users want a solid site that’s easy to use, has compelling features, and allows them to leverage some of their existing online identities and content repositories. We have for example integrated our site with Flickr for photo imports and with Facebook and Twitter for sharing of content.

There is no silver bullet. Our experience tells us that there is not one single feature that in and of itself makes a big difference. We have made thousands of small and large improvements in the course of the last 3 years of development and it’s the combined set of features and enhancements that drives the satisfaction and retention rate of our users. And many improvements are still to come. In addition to the web site, the iPhone as well as other smartphones have been another trigger for growth. Besides providing a tremendous user experience, the fact that these devices now have GPS integrated has opened the door to more people who didn’t have personal GPS devices.


GPS BN: Do you feel that privacy is important for your users when sharing geo-aware UGC?
JS: Absolutely. The combination of location-aware apps and personal information makes privacy an important area of attention for us. The most important part of this is to be very open and upfront to users about the fact that they are sharing their location online and giving them the tools to keep their data private when they want that.

GPS BN: in terms of funding and profitability, where are you standing today?
JS: We have raised series A capital from private investors. The first quarter this year we were nearly break-even and our goal is to reach profitability this year.

GPS BN: What do you envision for the next 5 years?
JS: We are playing in a very high-growth market. The potential for growth is enormous. Demand from both consumers and business is accelerating. The mobile ecosystem is becoming more and more open, driven by innovation in distribution and open platforms like iPhone and Android. There is lots of competition, which will inevitably lead to consolidation and a shake-out. Within 5 years the large field of competitors will have to be reduced to a handful of leaders. My goal is to make sure we remain a leading force in this market, and I am confident we are going to achieve that.