mShopper (a dba for 2B Wireless Inc.).

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: TECH STARTUP OF THE MONTH - Using mobile phones for shopping - Company overview

INITIAL LIGHT BULB:

"I literally woke up in the middle of the night and had this idea, the whole nine yards," said David Gould, CEO and founder of mShopper. The concept: a company focused on technology to make cell phones shopping tools.

At the time, Gould was a Manhattanite fresh off running mobile content for Virgin Mobile USA, interviewing for a position with Bay Area venture capital firms. So he called his pregnant wife, Heidi, and convinced her it was a good idea to launch a cell phone-based shopping company rather than take a job.

In April 2005, after laying the groundwork for several months, Gould incorporated the company while still a New Yorker and relocated to Boulder last year. "It's a great place to live," he said of the move, "and a great place to start a tech company."

Now employing 10 full-timers and utilizing a similarly sized group of contractors, mShopper went live in September.

IN A NUTSHELL:

"mShopper is all things mobile shopping," Gould said. "We have a unique service that fits between the wireless carriers, retailers large and small, and, of course, mobile shoppers. It allows shoppers to buy anything, right through their phone; it allows carriers to offer this unique service to their subscribers; and it offers retailers a new distribution channel."

The company's first two mobile shopping functions are Pricelt and Buylt. The former allows users to enter product information on the mShopper mobile site and find out if they can beat a brick-and-mortar retailer's price on the fly. Buylt allows users to do just that: buy it via their mobile phone and their mShopper account.

While usage is free to customers, mShopper's revenue model is triple-tiered: commissions from Buylt sales, add-on services it markets to retailers, and licensing fees to wireless carriers. mShopper's team converts retailers' catalogs to usable mobile shopping pages in-house.

"We have a sales team that recruits merchants," Gould said. "We go from the biggest of big box retailers to those great little niche retailers."

One of the latter is EXL Sports.com, New Jersey-based sports memorabilia dealer that signed on with mShopper in September. "Every indicator says that (mobile shopping) is where things are headed," said Tim Kassouf...