KEY POINTS:
A new tech company launching an innovative mobile phone address service says it won't work with any of New Zealand's incubator companies because they might hold back business growth.
ETree director Iain Mackenzie says customers and suppliers sometimes don't take companies working with incubators seriously.
"We just got
the impression that being in an incubator environment was limiting. Other businesses saw them as a start-up and did not take them seriously," says Mackenzie, who, with colleague Chris Reid, has launched eTree, a service which sends business cards to mobile phone address books on request.
"We looked at The Icehouse at the University of Auckland but we did not see the advantage of it," he says. "The feedback was quite mixed from people who had gone through that process."
His views are shared by Ben Northrop, co-founder of Run the Red, a successful digital mobile marketing company. "We were in that situation a few years ago and decided to steer away from it," says Northrop.
"In the same way, I know several companies which came through the process [successfully]."
Northrop welcomes the arrival of eTree. "It's a sign the industry is maturing as more services are introduced - and not just by the big carriers," he says.
ETree will seek "angel investors" or venture capital to drive the new business forward.
Mackenzie and Reid recently quit their day jobs as defence scientists to work on the business, born from an original idea of Reid, who has a PhD in physics.
Both men are using their savings to finance the embryonic business, and family and friends are also involved.
"We decided we really want to concentrate on this," says Mackenzie. "We want to be able to have our full energies at this stage, doing the marketing. It needs to be very full focus."
Companies such as Yellow Pages could be interested, he says.
Mackenzie and Reid says the motivation for the product is "helping people get the most value from the technology in their pockets".
To use the service, people visit the eTree website, register free and type in contact details which normally appear on their business cards. They also choose an "eCode" - a word or character code that links to their online profile, for instance a first name, such as "Joe".
When the client texts the word "Joe" to 5585, all his contact details are downloaded to their phone address book. This costs 99c for the person requesting the details.
As well as having their business card details sent to mobile phone address books, registered eTree users can have contacts sent to email addresses as well, which achieves "phone/email address book synchronisation".
The company is planning to offer a premium service for companies which would like to offer a free text number through which contacts can request their details.
"Where we see it as useful is in a situation where, as a real estate agent for instance, you want your customer to have your details and instead of, or as well as, having your business card, you text to 5585 and these details then [go] into the customer's phone," says Mackenzie.
As phones are becoming more sophisticated, with Smartphones and BlackBerrys, services such as eTree will become more common, says the entrepreneur.
While he expects the service to appeal to businesses - particularly at conferences where hundreds of business cards are exchanged - Mackenzie hopes it will also be used in social situations.
New Zealand Herald technology writer Peter Griffin is unsure what demand there will be for eTree as business cards are becoming obsolete in the circles he moves in. He just tells people to Google his name on the internet. As more people have websites this will be more common.
Griffin adds it is hard to change people's behaviour unless the technology is simple.
Mackenzie wants to start in New Zealand and test the market here before planning anything else. "Our dream is to take it international."
What makes New Zealand a perfect test market, says Mackenzie, is that it has dual phone networks, with Telecom using the CDMA cellular phone system and Vodafone using GSM.
The US market also has dual phone networks, says Mackenzie.
About 85 per cent of mobile phones in New Zealand, on Vodafone and Telecom networks, can receive contacts in a form compatible with their contact address books, known as the "vCard standard".
Models that are vCard incompatible can get an eTree plain text message reply containing all the details.
The idea has a provisional patent in New Zealand and Mackenzie and Reid are applying for a worldwide one.
Mackenzie says they have been unable to find any similar services.
William Cass - e-commerce entrepreneur and chief executive of www.aangel.com - says the industry emerging around "contact aggregation" is interesting.
Aangel has another way of helping its customers upload business card information. As part of its $10-a- month service, mobile phone users can ring a www.aangel.com operator, give the details of a business card and the operator puts the details into their mobile phone and computer.
"Tapping in all the details of a business card, you can use 500 button presses by the time you have put in the email address and a company's PO Box number," says Cass.
Aangel also has a converting speech service, where you can leave a message with the aangel operator, which will be sent as a text.
It's ideal for older people who find texting a big effort, says Cass.
