TLabs Showcase on travel startups featuring Israel-based Folloyu, a system that allows websites to transfer user activity from the browser to mobile devices.
Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?
Folloyu was founded by Alfred Shaffir at the beginning of 2011, who is also the active CEO. Alfred is a veteran of the semi-conductor industry, doing various roles in Intel and Cadence Design systems.
He holds an MBA from Bar-Ilan University and a BSc in Mechanical engineering from Tel Aviv University.
What financial support did you have to launch the business?
So far, Folloyu is bootstrapped.
What problem are you trying to solve?
Online users are subject to interruptions which require them to disengage from their current online activity. The result in most cases is a complete abandonment of the content they were engaged in.
Describe the business, core products and services?
Folloyu’s solution enables online users to switch device while remaining in the same activity they were involved with, in a matter of a click.
For example, online shopper can move from his laptop to his mobile while the information, like what page he was on, shopping cart content, and even secured information (e.g. login) is exactly restored on the smartphone.
The value proposition for websites:
- Increasing mobile presence
- Increasing conversion rates
- Increasing time on site
- Improving overall customer satisfaction and loyalty
In addition, the customer will have access to a digested report describing the usage of Folloyu technology in his site, and additional information about his visitors browsing habits and mobile behaviour.
Who are your key customers and users at launch?
Folloyu technology fits to almost every website around: ecommerce/traveling, publishers, video, trading, gaming and other content owners. At the moment, we are concentrating our effort in the ecommerce and publishers verticals.
Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?
Our service was validated before starting R&D and we are receiving excellent feedback since then. There is a constant flow of customers that recognize Folloyu’s benefits and embed it into there website.
What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?
Currently the service is free of charge. In the future we plan to charge our customers according to a monthly subscription plan, based on the amount of traffic a particular website will require. Our customers will receive notification prior to start of billing.
SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?
There is a great opportunity these days to create a solution that on one hand addresses one of the biggest problems in the online world – the abandonment – and on the other hand, utilizes the abundance of devices hooked to the web.
Presently there are some solutions addressing mainly end-users’ in various industries: music listening (fivedetails.com), chatting (trillian.im), video (Vantrix.com) and even Google’s Chrome to Phone extension.
We believe that the competition will continue concentrating on the end users, while Folloyu will focus on producing a broad, generic and simple to implement B2B solution.
Who advised you your idea isn't going to be successful and why didn't you listen to them?
About 5% of the people I have discussed this with, thought it was not a good idea. The rest were enthusiastic. So basically, this is a good idea.
What is your success metric 12 months from now?
10,000 subscribers.
Here is a clip:
NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.