Boost Mobile, Amp’d founder now heads action-camera startup
The domestic market’s infatuation with mobile virtual network operators looks to be on an upswing as mobile carriers look to partner with new brands in order to reach niche market segments and drive revenue from incremental usage on their multibillion-dollar networks.
However, this infatuation is the not first go-around for such MVNO endeavors. A decade ago, MVNOs were being touted as the new cellular savior, with big-name brands such as Disney and ESPN swarming the space in search of cellular gold. (And if we want to go even further back in time, companies known as resellers have been purchasing airtime on established networks since the early 1990s.)
Of course, those grand ideas died nearly as quickly as they arrived, leaving the industry uneasy in re-entering the MVNO space.
A pair of those mid-2000 pioneers included Boost Mobile and Amp’d Mobile, which were both founded by the same person: Peter Adderton. While both of those brands lacked the domestic name cache of other MVNOs, they made up for it with audacious marketing backed by Adderton.
Adderton initially came to the U.S. with his Boost Mobile brand that partnered with enterprise-focused Nextel Communications to expand into the Gen-X youth market. Adderton founded the Boost brand in his native Australia in 2000 before partnering with Nextel in 2002 to bring the “lifestyle-based telecommunications company” to the United States.
Boost Mobile’s success eventually led to Nextel buying out Adderton’s stake in the U.S. operations. That led to the formation of Amp’d Mobile, which was one of the first MVNOs to partner with Verizon Wireless for network access.
Despite aggressive marketing initiatives and one of the industry’s first attempts at producing mobile-first content, Amp’d eventually succumbed to increased competition from established operators.
Following the demise of Amp’d, Adderton took a slightly different direction by founding Agency 3.0, which targeted the digital media space. More recently, Adderton formed Digital Turbine through his work with Mandalay Digital, which has an increased focus on the mobile content space.
Adderton was recently named CEO at 360fly, which is developing an action camera that with a single lens can record 360-degree videos and pictures. The company last August closed on $17.8 million in Series B funding that included Qualcomm Ventures and lead investor Catterton.
While the action-camera market is currently dominated by GoPro, Adderton thinks 360fly’s unique features can help it stand out in a crowded and growing market. That feature set includes integration with smartphones that allows users to edit and post video content immediately after it’s recorded.
“People are consuming less and less video now, usually less than one minute chunks,” Adderton explained. “There’s a need to capture as much as you can in that one minute. With the 360-degree lens we can capture everything around you in that one minute. And, that ability to edit and share that content nearly instantaneously is a real game changer.”
In looking to expand the brand, Adderton recently brought on some familiar faces from his days at Boost, Amp’d and Digital Turbine, including Dennis Magner as CMO, Michael Lanzon as director of sales and Scott Anderson as chief creative director.
Despite not being a direct participant in the domestic MVNO space he helped to shape, Adderton remains an active observer in addition to a “big shareholder” in Boost Australia. Adderton noted that the market is maturing and making a comeback, citing MVNOs like FreedomPop that are taking advantage of their Internet knowledge to offer unique services in the market, diminishing the need for deeper carrier partnerships.
“It has definitely matured over the past decade, and with these new players bringing a different mindset to the market, it’s really showing some new legs,” Adderton said. “Many of these new MVNOs are pushing the Wi-Fi model and lessening the need to rely on carriers, which puts them in a stronger position.”
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