|
Voxilla
When Voxilla first appeared on the web in September 2003 as an information source for Voice over IP, few had ever heard of the technology... and fewer had even used it.
At the time, only three companies in the United States were offering full VoIP communications services directly to consumers and the largest, Vonage, had less than 30,000 customers. And Voxilla was a one-man shop, operating out of a small garage in a San Francisco home.
Three years later, VoIP is well on its way towards supplanting a 100-year-old circuit-based phone system that is limited in its ability to meet modern technology demands. In the US, more than 2,000 providers offer a variety of VoIP services, and many more businesses, both large and small, are entering the VoIP provider space daily. By 2008, IP communications is expected to be the norm in between 10 and 20 percent of US households (an eight-fold increase from today) and in a huge segment of business establishments.
Telecom experts are quickly reaching a consensus that IP-based communications service will eventually replace the circuit-based phone system, for a number of reasons, including greatly reduced operating and maintenance costs, significantly more efficient use of network capacity, easy integration of web-based and software applications and vastly improved features and functionality.
Voxilla’s Growth
Over the past 34 months, Voxilla has grown rapidly along with the industry it serves. As a result:
- More than 1.2 million visit Voxilla.com each month to learn about the latest in VoIP hardware, software and services;
- Our direct-to-consumer marketing of VoIP devices resulted in sales of more than $2 million in 2005 (the company’s second full year) and is expected to grow to $4 million this year;
- Voxilla’s unique VoIP tools, which allow end users to compare a large number of VoIP services and to easily configure many different VoIP devices with dozens of providers, are used by thousands each month;
- Voxilla’s user bulletin board is now the leading community forum for the industry;
- Voxilla has led directly to thousands of new customer acquisitions, at very low costs, for our service provider partners;
- Voxilla At Your Service, a recently launched, one-stop fulfillment and “touchless” provisioning operation, is used by dozens of service providers attracted by the low cost of offering the latest in new technologies to its customers.
Recent Initiatives
Recently, with direct help from many different Keiretsu forum members, Voxilla has been strengthening its executive team, tightening its technology and business infrastructures, and moving aggressively into the area of complete small- and medium-business Internet Communications solutions.
Future Expansion
We are in a unique position to offer pre-configured turnkey solutions to our SMB customers at lower overall costs than our competitors. Our competitors do not have the knowledge or capability to pre-configure solutions for their customers. Solution providers do not have the ability to pre-configure solutions en-masse as we do. We have the knowledge, the online and backend tools, the well-trafficked web site and established name recognition to market customized solutions at a lower cost.
Voxilla Executive Team
Over the past few months:
- We have restructured our Board of Directors. New members include:
- Brad Oberwager – A Keiretsu Forum Bay Area member, serial entrepreneur and investor who sits on a number of boards of technology and consumer product companies.
- Jim Pitkow – A technology business adviser and founder of two separate technology companies that sold to Google and Verisign.
- Amin Mufti has joined our staff as Chief Operations Officer. Amin, a member of the East Bay chapter of the Keiretsu Forum, was co-founder and VP for Business Development of At Road, Inc., a mobile intelligence company that went public in 2000, and worked closely with Verizon, AT&T, and others in the telecom industry.
- Eric Chamberlain joined the Voxilla staff as Director of Engineering. Eric has brought a strong voice and data solutions background to the team, having worked in VoIP since its early days in 1997 and selling his first telecom startup in 2001.
Technology/Business Infrastructure
The company has been transitioning its business operations to NetSuite, a highly regarded hosted CRM system. About 80 percent of the transition is complete and we expect to be fully integrated with NetSuite within the month.
By the end of August, we expect to unify our various web sites into a single presence managed with one content management system. This effort involves a complete overhaul and redesign of our main content and sales sites, and the migration of tens of thousands of customers and registered users, hundreds of individual content pieces and more than 40 thousand community forum posts.
SMB Solutions Offering
We have been in conversations with major carriers and other strategic partners to launch our SMB solutions packages. We will soon launch joint marketing efforts with major VoIP industry leaders, including device manufacturer Cisco/Linksys and internet communications server developer Communigate.
Our projected revenues are conservatively estimated at $9 million in 2007 and $16 million in 2008.
Contact
Marcelo Rodriguez – Founder and CEO, Phone: +1 415-762-1177
marcelo@voxilla.com
Amin Mufti – COO and President,
Phone: +1 415-762-1164
amin@voxilla.com
| |
