As part of the Business Plan Challenge, we check in on last year's winners.
ADMOBILIZE
Rodolfo Saccoman’s AdMobilize is out to change the face of old-school outdoor advertising.
For the second-place winner of the Business Plan Challenge, 2013 was the year for launching the service, registering “AdMobilizers,” forming partnerships, raising seed funding and growing a team. And as Saccoman sees it, “2014 will be our breakout year.”
AdMobilize offers a new kind of advertising network, where people who sign up to participate — AdMobilizers — get paid to wear backpacks that hold iPads with the ad on the screen or drive their cars displaying a brand in the back window. At CollegeFest in Boston, AdMobilize signed up 700 students in 12 hours; the company now has more than 1,500 AdMobilizers around the world. But the secret sauce of his company, Saccoman says, is AdMobilize’s patented technology. Through its platform and AdBeacon, advertisers for the first time can get real-time metrics and in-depth analytics on just who viewed their ads. Think Nielsen for the outdoor advertising world.
Last week, AdMobilize closed a deal with Gotcha Rides to become its “advertising, street team management and offline metrics platform” for cart advertising and street team campaigns, Saccoman said. Swoop Miami is another key partnership, and others, including one with a large cell carrier and another with a car dealership, are under development, he said.
AdMobilize advisor Mok Oh, a former chief scientific officer at PayPal, spent five days with the AdMobilize team dissecting every aspect of the business, an exercise Saccoman highly recommends for any entrepreneur. Saccoman and Oh also held an event at Nova Southeastern in January attended by more than 80 potential clients.
Saccoman plans to become cash-flow-positive by mid-year. The next-generation of AdBeacon will be out next month. The company has raised $700,000 since inception; it is raising a seed round of $1 million now and accepting new investors. With a team of five, AdMobilize plans to hire two or three more people to the team early this year. The company recently added three more board members.
Ultimate goal? “We will be known as the catalyst and premier company that changed the outdoor media industry forever,” said Saccoman.
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We'll continue to follow the progress of AdMobilize, as we do all our winners, throughout the years.
Read about the other winners in the Community Track here.
More about the Business Plan Challenge and to view the contest rules: MiamiHerald.com/challenge