Building a Marketing Software Company from Utah: Convirza CEO Jason Wells (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You left in 2005?

Jason Wells: Yes, I left in 2005. I was tapped by a recruiter from Sony Pictures. Sony Pictures wanted to start and build a mobile content business around the world. They’ve got every movie asset. They have licensing rights for games and content. We had a 60-person development team to create creating mobile games. This is probably in the heyday of mobile content and the early days of apps on phones.

I went in as the Senior Vice President of Sony Pictures Digital and built that business. Everything that we were doing was a first. We were doing the first full-length movie streaming on mobile phone. The first deal was done in Korea. The second deal we did was in Italy where 3G was just being released to stream videos. Then we had content and marketing programs. We owned TV rights around the world as well.

For example, the game show Wheel of Fortune was the number one game show in Russia at that time. We built mobile apps and mobile text messaging games that you can play along at the same time. One of the things that I was highly impressed was the amazing marketing capacity of a mobile phone. We built that business. I was only at Sony for three years. During that time, I moved to London as well. We opened up offices in Asia and Latin America. We established relationships with all the mobile operators and created mobile marketing programs with those operators.

I have grown from corporate to stratups, but even in my corporate environment, they were all startups. It was interesting because while we had capital, in some cases, it was harder because the expectations of our business unit was to have the same profitability and systems that an existing business already had. If you remember the ringtone era where you would sell a ringtone for a euro or a pound, my comrades in the distribution world of television rights of movies would go and sign a $15 million contract over five years. Here I am striking a deal with Vodafone to sell mobile games for $2.99.

It was an interesting complex environment from that perspective to create an entrepreneurial business within an existing operation. At the same time, we still had the same capital constraints and budget requirements. It was just fitting that into a more complex environment.

Sramana Mitra: Yes, and the politics is complicated as well.

Jason Wells: The politics is very complicated.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Building a Marketing Software Company from Utah: Convirza CEO Jason Wells
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