With the market saying 'no' to Nokia's Ovi Store, what do you think can be done to change this?Trutap, the mobile messaging community service, has put all 30 of their London Kings Cross team on notice. The company has had to make severe cut backs to reduce it’s monthly burn in order to keep it’s service live.
This is confirmed by a high level Trutap executive I know well.
And it’s a bit of a shame. The company has been innovating like no tomorrow — and the newly released version 2.0 if Trutap is absolutely phenomenal. To give you an idea of just how well received the new version is, about 70% of the service’s users have updated their status, location and home town! 70%!
The original backer of Trutap was a Hedge Fund by the name of Tudor. It’s perhaps no surprise that, as a result of the credit crunch, Tudor have orphaned Trutap and have reportedly stopped investing in private companies.
During new investment rounds (Trutap was due a £2-4m one shortly), it traditional, often expected and typically required that the original investor participate in some kind of ‘tag along’ manner in the next round of investment. Without their original backer to play, Trutap find themselves in a challenging position.
One person’s challenge is another person’s bounteous opportunity though.
If you’re in control of a media company, you should be hovering like a massive falcon above Trutap — and hoover them up. And I think you’ll get a very, very good deal. With over a quarter of a million users and very well received new version hitting the marketplace right now, Trutap is poised to make a ton of cash from mobile advertising, sponsorship and the virtual currency system (due out next year). They’ve already started making revenues — they’ve proved the concept, as it were. But they need an investor who is able to keep the company moving whilst they move into profits.
It really would be a shame to see Trutap simply go to the wall. The IP alone there — their instant messaging platform — is hugely, hugely valuable. In fact I can think of a load of companies who could either buy or license it for their own ends. The company and the service is due to continue in skeleton-mode for the moment (their software is that well built, it only requires one or two folk to keep it ticking over).
If you’re on the hunt for an investment like Trutap — a ready-made mobile community with users and a team to support it — and you’d like a really good deal, drop me a note and I’ll connect you to their senior management.
I wish the chaps at Trutap every success.
