Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Tasso Roumeliotis, CEO of Safely (Part 5)

SM: Interesting. When you look around, what are some location-based killer apps that you’ve seen – not your own apps – that are really impressive, really interesting?

TR: For me, I would categorize it as a couple different types of apps. The first apps that I still think have massive appeal and are still used at an incredible rate are navigation and local search. These are things that didn’t exist years ago and now, effectively, I can’t live without. It’s an essential crutch that I have. These are absolutely the most powerful applications. That’s what I call from the utility. When I’ve got some time to spare, which, unfortunately, is very rare these days, and I just want to try something new that has appeal, I like the services that companies like Booyah! developed, which are a little bit like Foursquare, but rather than being a real world check-in, it’s a virtual world. The virtual world represents where I am physically. Wherever I am, I’m able to do different things like buy real estate, play a game of Monopoly, but the real estate that I’m buying is reflecting where I am right now. I think there are very clever games that can be built around location as well. I’ve used Foursquare. I’ve not hit the serendipity point, because I guess I’m not that popular. But I can definitely see why that’s a very powerful application. Those are the services that I like. I’m more partial to games and utilities.

SM: So, there’s nothing else that you’ve seen that caught your imagination in other domain than the ones that we’ve talked about?

TR: Well, I did talk about the gaming approach, the fusing of the virtual and physical worlds. I think that’s very powerful. There’ll be some great companies built on that.

SM: Now, I would like you to look out and suggest some ideas for entrepreneurs to look into in the domain of location-based services.

TR: I’ll tell you the areas that I’ll look into, and I’ve got an interesting lens. One area where I think there’s big potential is using location in health care. Because we do play in this personal security space, we see requests from customers who have children with autism, with grandparents who maybe have Alzheimer’s, with pets that run away a significant percentage of time. These are big human pain points where people are willing to pay for solutions. I think health care is a very big category. I outlined health care and security for pets as well, given that there’re 150 million cats and dogs in the United States that are parts of families.

The other area that it is massively under-invested in right now, because it lacks the hype that consumer does, is enterprise. There are companies that have been around for a while, like I mentioned Xora, which has a done a great job of providing solutions for fleet managers, but every different business has its own vertical solution. There are other big businesses out there like construction and industrial equipment and shipping and other areas where all these people are working and assets that are there are either being location tagged or carrying phones that are location tagged. There’s going to be a whole group of applications that better optimize and improve our lives that enterprises are going to be willing to pay for. That’s another big, under-invested area that has the benefit as well of being an area where you can charge and get to your $1 million of revenue pretty quickly.

SM: As far as these types of applications that you talked about, the health care apps, the pet locators, as well as some of the cargo types of applications, shipping and containers and all that stuff, these are not exactly mobile phone applications. These are more tagging applications, right?

TR: If you look at the mobile industry, it’s wrong to look at it just from a mobile phone perspective.

SM: No, I agree. I agree. I’m just pointing out that there’s a distinction here that these are applications that are not on mobile phones; these are applications that are mobile tags.

TR: Yes. With Alzheimer’s stricken parents, that could be a phone.

SM: Yes, but there’s no guarantee that an Alzheimer’s patient is going to carry a phone around with him. In fact, the odds are very low.

TR: The device that people are expecting to launch will have phone-like capabilities. Are you going to want to be to talk to them? You make it easier. Perhaps it’s not a Samsung Galaxy S2, but it will have phone-like capabilities. When I look at the industry, I think it’s very narrow to say, “What’s the next app on the app store?” No offense, but who cares?

SM: That’s not what I’m asking. I’m just asking what other ideas there are for taking advantage of location.

TR: If you talk to Qualcomm and companies that are pioneering the chips sets and people who are launching these services, M2M is about not getting 100% penetration of a population but 500% penetration, so five devices out there per person in a country. A lot of the innovations are going to happen on those. Between chip set companies and operators, we’re seeing mega investments made. So, I’m a believer in that space.

SM: Great. This was a very interesting conversation. Is there anything that we missed that you want to talk about?

TR: Another area where I’m seeing a lot of investments happening – and I by no means have the answer. It’s a hard problem. I see retailers and advertisers want it as well. It’s how location can be used to help bring people into their stores, whether it’s like a Groupon couponing application or different kinds of loyalty programs. We’ve seen on the platform side of our business, immense demand from people looking for solutions there. I’m not saying I have it, but my message to entrepreneurs out there is that ad firms and retailers are knocking on our door to look for potential solutions, and we’re not in that solution business. So, there’s an opportunity in there for someone.

SM: Yes. It’s a complex problem.

TR: Very complex, yes. You’d have to try a few times before you figure it out, too.

SM: Very cool. Thank you, Tasso, for your time.

TR: Great. Thank you.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Tasso Roumeliotis, CEO of Safely
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