BC Business
Roam, T-Mobile partnership | BCBusinessA Vancouver software engineer succeeded where many failed by taking his idea for a test run and partnering with U.S. telecom giant T-Mobile.
To succeed, think like an automaker: take your idea for a test run. The old saying about ideas being worth a dime a dozen is particularly true in the world of entrepreneurship. For every thousand people with an idea for a business, maybe a dozen will actually build a viable one. The Problem
The old saying about ideas being worth a dime a dozen is particularly true in the world of entrepreneurship. For every thousand people with an idea for a business, maybe a dozen will actually build a viable one.
Like many others, Emir Aboulhosn, a Vancouver software engineer who often worked in the U.S., had an idea. Feeling he was paying too much in roaming fees while using his cellphone in the U.S., he wanted to create a business that would provide Canadians with a more cost-effective method.
A veteran of one business startup, Aboulhosn had seen others dream up an idea and immediately run with it, sourcing some financing, building a team and starting the business development process. Most floundered amidst a sea of unforeseen problems.
Aboulhosn was determined to avoid their fate, so he applied a product-development process to his service business. Instead of producing a standard business plan, which attempts to develop an entire business from a standing start, he approached the task as an automobile company might: he prototyped it and tested it. For more than a year, he operated a mini-telco among 2,000 Canadians who used their phones in Europe and the U.S. This produced enough data on customer needs, habits and desires that he could create a larger business tailored from the prototype.
In general, he was able to determine the “how, why and when” of offering a complex service. For example, he discovered that more people wanted to use their phones in the U.S. than in Europe, so turned his larger business to that market. He was also able to understand why customers would buy, how much they would pay and when they would contract for the service (usually at the last minute).
More particularly, however, he discovered business challenges. For example, he originally had planned to anchor his business on sales of SIM cards that could be inserted into customers’ phones, but discovered that a business couldn’t survive on that alone. So now he also sells his own phones that customers can use whenever they travel to the U.S.
Lastly, he learned the myriad organizational and technical tasks involved with trying to set up a complex mobile phone system. Not the least of these was making deals with the many suppliers involved – no easy task in an industry that has its own culture and language and distrusts outsiders. Aboulhosn spent so much time studying the industry and so much time talking to insiders that eventually he became accepted as an expert on the subject of mobile phone systems.
After more than two years the neophyte mobile phone service provider was ready with a deal to rent time on the American system of the mobile giant T-Mobile. He had his own line of phones, manufactured for him in China, and a SIM-card system for those Canadians who wanted to use their own phones in the U.S.
In January, Roam Mobility Inc. was launched and Aboulhosn entered the next phase of his business: growing it.
• Get to know your customers before you start. Roam was able to launch with a full system because it had already been tested on a smaller scale.
• Get industry buy-in. Aboulhosn was able to build Roam because he made industry allies in the U.S., where he hoped to operate.
• Understand the complexity of what you’re trying to do. Creating Roam involved dozens of deals with suppliers and co-operators and required agile dodging of the landmines that inevitably appear.