Observations from Boston Mobile Start-Up Showcase

Observations from Boston Mobile Start-Up Showcase

Mark Lowenstein, Managing Director at m-ecosystem, did a super review of the Start-up Showcase, organized by MoMo Boston and held at the MIT Museum, in his “Lens on Wireless” newsletter:

This past Monday, I attended a Mobile Start-Up showcase at the MIT Museum, which featured some thirty exhibitors. I thought I would use this Lens to offer a few big picture observations about what an event like this tells us about the state of the market. Hats off to the Mobile Monday Boston and MIT Mobile Club teams who put together a great event.

An initial macro observation is that the event helped me realize how significantly the wireless world has changed in four years. While there were a few established businesses demonstrating (ie. they have some funding and some staff), the vast majority were shops of fewer than 10, not necessarily a full time gig, self- or angel- funded, and led by people in their 20s. What was amazing that nearly all had apps/platforms/solutions that you could use today. There was even interactive iPhone app that served as a guide to the evening, no doubt pulled together between finals with a few shots of Red Bull to keep the team going. The barriers to entry to join the wireless party are near nil. Getting noticed, finding development talent, and building a business (if that’s what the objective is) – that’s where the challenges are.

Second, I’d say this was a terrific showcase of some of the latest application development tools. About one-quarter of the exhibitors were in the app development/content creation/content management space. Some were focused on offering platforms that just about anyone could use to quickly and fairly easily develop and deploy an application or create a mobile web site. I call this “WordPress Applied to Mobile”. We’re also seeing the emergence of app development “specialty shops”. For example DoInk Animation and Drawing provides drawing and animation tools for the iPad. Tap ‘N Tap is focused on the UI for Android tablets. Unbound Commerce is focused on building commerce sites for retailers, another is targeting university sites, and TourSphere is about museums and cities. Continue reading the Full Post Here.