Movêro making the call to grow

Firm helps clients with mobile service

Austin Business Journal (link to article)

By Jonathan Selden Austin Business Journal Staff, June 30, 2006 - Movêro Technology Inc. is making a big business out of helping large companies manage their mobile communications devices.

The Austin company -- started by SigmaTel Inc. founder Spence Jackson and a former Sprint Nextel Corp. executive in 2003 -- is adding 2,000 subscribers to its service every week.

To keep up with sales, the company is adding about two employees a week to its tech support call center and just moved from a 6,000-square-foot office into a 16,000 square-foot building just constructed in a North Austin industrial park. Movêro employs about 50 people in Austin.

"We got tired of having three people to an office," Movêro CEO Bruce Friedman says.

But the space's cavernous array of cubicles won't stay that way for long."We're filling it up," Friedman says.

Movêro's success follows the old adage about doing something so well that no one else wants to do it -- namely, troubleshooting companies' increasingly complex and disjointed wireless communications networks and devices.

"Today's modern-day phone is very quickly evolving to a PC-like device," says Movêro board member and wireless industry analyst Bob Egan with Needham, Mass.-based Tower Group Inc.

Combine that technological complexity with the multitudes of competing wireless services and devices, and Egan compares the current situation to the early days of the PC industry, when it was common for multiple employees to bring their own -- and not necessarily compatible -- computers to work.

"They want to provide some standardization," he says, referring to corporate chief information officers who are crying out for help in dealing with all the new and diverse technology.

Standardization is what Movêro does.

"They sit squarely between the operators and the CIO, helping them to drive down costs, while at the same time enabling workers to take full advantage of the efficiencies that being mobile can bring to a business," Egan says.

In wireless industry vernacular, Movêro is a "mobility manager." Translated, that means it helps companies make sure their cell phones, Blackberries and the like are working together.

To do that, the company employs a phalanx of tech support personnel at its Austin call center to handle customers' problems and monitor their wireless networks -- and they do so with Nordstrom-like customer service. For instance, the call center's average hold time, Friedman says, is six seconds -- not bad for an industry that's been making headlines for its movie-length call center queues.

Friedman, who was lured to Movêro as vice president of Sprint's mobility organization, says Movêro spent years developing relationships with each of the big four major wireless providers -- Sprint (NYSE: S), Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ), Cingular Wireless LLC, and T-Mobile USA -- to provide executive-level wireless services to their customers.

"It took us two years to get contracts with all four carriers," he says. "It's not something that happens overnight. It's pretty tough to do."

Now that Movêro is nestled under the wings of major phone companies, experts say its growth opportunities are boundless.

"This is a market that's growing north of 100 percent year over year," says Egan. While it numbers "a few hundred million today," he says, "we expect this market to grow to a billion-dollar market over the next couple of years."

This is amid a steady steam of venture capital funding that's moving into the wireless industry, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers/National Venture Capital Association MoneyTree report based on data from Thompson Financial.

Nationwide last year, there were 160 wireless venture deals totaling $1.5 billion, according to the report. The year before, that number was $1.2 billion. Already in the first quarter of this year, there have been 38 deals for $404 million.

Movêro is ready to capitalize on the growing market.

Looking on the day of the interview at the new office space, which is so hollow it resembles an elementary school on the last day of class, Friedman says the company will "have this filled up pretty quick. This time next year, we're hoping to be looking for a second facility. We're really just at the beginning of this."