This past month during the Mobile World Congress, Shaherose Charania (a mobile expert by trade and VP at Opinno) spoke about the powers of mobile technology to spur positive change in the world. Presenting before a crowd of entrepreneurs at Barcelona Activa, Shaherose posed the challenge that, because we have been granted the a gift of being educated, having resources, and being part of a network of innovators, we should always be finding ways of sharing that gift.
“Generosity with one’s intellectual, spiritual, material or physical wherewithal is highly commended. When withheld, such gifts are a futile burden.” - Aga Khan Development Network: An Ethical Framework
Starting a company is one way of giving away our gift, because a company creates jobs and designs products that positively affect the user. Speaking specifically about mobile technology, Shaherose raised the point that "to raise connectivity, you increase productivity, and when you increase productivity, you increase wealth." Therefore, mobile tech entrepreneurs should use their gifts and their passion to affect positive social change in the world.
Interesting consumer trends and opportunities for mobile innovation:
> Google is quickly acquiring startups, many in mobile. These early acquisitions end the competitive innovation race in niche markets. Keep your eye on Google when building your startup.
> Acquisitions in the mobile space, if not by Google, seem to only be happening with European Carriers (not US-based carriers). Watch this trend for your startup, are you offering an innovation (for example Aarvark offering social search technology to Google) or a loyal user base (For example JAJAH offering internal calling customer base to Telefonica)?
> Social Gaming: this is a big money-maker online. Opportunities to create sticky, social games using the phone, virtual currency options and more await future founders.
> Social Fraud: Someone can impersonate you online in 10 seconds. How can the phone be used to protect your online identity? What threats exist for personal security on the mobile phone itself? How often do you get a "spam" phone call or "spam" text message. This industry is ripe for innovation.
> Online Shopping: Shopping online on sites like Zappos and Overstock isn't for everyone; hence the rise of limited quantity sites like Gilt.com. Where can the mobile phone play a role in driving an easy, targeted, social online shopping experience?
> Crowd-sourcing: Mechanical turk, leveraging the power of many to complete a task. The power of the collective to answer questions. What tasks can be parsed, delivered on the phone, and returned with value to complete a greater task? How can we truly mobilize crowdsourcing?
> Mobile-local-social: Foursquare, Gowalla, Rummble are all in a battle to capture the mobile-social-local realm of social interactions. How can the phone truly provide value and drive foot-traffic? Future founders in other parts of the world can find ways to innovate on the concept and design a truly localized mobile service.
> Hardware: With more and more apps, battery life must extend. In parallel, people are creatively finding ways to create energy - a battery you spin to charge, a energy source you kick like a soccer ball to create and subsequently use to light a room, a disposable source of energy. Innovation in hardware has begun, more to come.
Overall, the line between innovations on the web and future mobile applications and services is truly blurred. However, this assumes a smart phone, the basic phone is disconnected from this future of easy to use, valuable applications in day to day interactions.
Other Reflections on the investing and entrepreneurship ecosystem:
In addition to mobile technology, Shaherose's presentation included some insights into the current entrepreneurial ecosystem in Silicon Valley. For example: changes in the VC market. Now startups have to have a product in the market and show traction before getting funding. The whole idea of VCs taking risk, well, they're not. Or at least as not as much as they used to. VCs want startups to take care of everything before approaching them for funding. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, however, because entrepreneurs are funding the innovation stage instead of fundraising just to get off the ground.
VCs are also “double dipping” a lot more now than in the past. That is, they go back to the same companies that they’ve already invested in and invest again. VCs want to fast-track that innovation stage with an already experienced team. These "double dips" are still creating jobs, but are reducing risk and increasing chances for success. However, for newer entrepreneurs, this creates a greater challenge upfront to develop a product cheaply and quickly before being able to count on money from investors.
“In this brave new world, startups need to re-think the traditional VC set of “letter series” – A, B and so on. In this less liquid environment startups cannot rely on follow-on investment. You need to get enough money upfront to last you through to profitability.” – Esther Dyson, Angel Investor
A little background on Shaherose:
Shaherose was born in Canada but currently lives in the US, working with Opinno at the San Francisco office. In parallel she is the CEO and CoFounder of Women 2.0, which she launched in 2006. She is also an active advisor to a soon-to-be launched Mobile venture. She has a passion for bringing positive change to the world, and believes in the power of mobile technology to do just that. Before Opinno, Shaherose worked with Ribbit (BT) and more exenstively with Jajah for two years, as the Director of Product Management and Marketing which was acquired by Telefónica in 2009. She was also a part of the initial team at Talenthouse, a social network for emerging artists.
Recommended Resources:
- Bay Area TechWire
- Great Twitter Users to Follow
- Crunchbase @crunchbase
- Springwise @springwise
- YCombinator @newsycombinator
- Eric Reis @ericreis
- Dave McClure @davemcclure
- Om Malik @gigaom
- Naval Ravikant @venturehacks
Wednesday, July 14, 2010 at 5:03PM 
Francesco Baschieri, Spreaker: Francesco is the founder of the Italian startup, Spreaker, a social web radio that allows its user community to create their own radio shows (music, talk, entertainment) and to broadcast them live on internet-enabled radios. Spreaker is one of our Open Office Startups this summer. Surprised by the sheer number of people interested in listening to entrepreneurs and innovative ideas, he has taken full advantage of his time in the technology capital to spread the word about his product. He recently demo-ed to hundreds of founders and investors at SF Beta and looks forward to continuing to pitch his product and ideas over the next few months!
