Andrew Warner, host of the wildly popular Mixergy podcast, loves to talk to entrepreneurs about how they started their companies. His interviews are legend. Always exceedingly well-prepared, he peppers guests with tough questions, diving deep to uncover the essence of what makes each company unique and the insights other entrepreneurs can apply to growing their own business. Ara Bagdasarian, Omnilert’s CEO and co-founder recently braved the Mixergy inquisition. Here are some of the highlights of the interview. To listen to or read the entire Mixergy interview, Mixergy members can go to http://mixergy.com/interviews/ara-bagdasarian-omnilert/ If you’re not a Mixergy member, you can listen to the audio podcast here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/1153-how-newspaper-article/id348690336?i=342068103&mt=2#sthash.skI3eeqA.dpuf New mobile technology sparks an idea In 2002 Ara and his friend Nick Gustavsson were looking for a way to leverage their combined expertise in web development and mobile technology to create something new. “[We] were texting one another back then. You remember back in 2002, texting on a Nokia phone or Motorola Razr was a cutting edge phone, you had to press the one key three times to get the C character. So, it was very cumbersome.” The friends had been working on an idea called HomeSync, which used text messaging to prelist homes for sale via a blast to the real estate community to set up viewings for an instant sale. Over the course of six months, however, they found out through validation that Realtors found the thought a service like HomeSync off-putting and they weren’t ready for text messages yet. “Back then, most adults had no idea what a text message was. It just was not well-received. That’s when I was actually doing the research online and came across the article about Jeanne Clery. “At that point in time, in 2003, the only demographic that was using text messaging was the 18-24 year old college market. It just seemed to be a much greater problem than selling homes at the time, the campus safety conundrum. From Heartbreak to Inspiration While researching the college market, Ara happened to see a heartbreaking archived newspaper article about Jeanne Clery, a student at Lehigh University who was murdered by a rapist in 1986. Sadly, she had chosen Lehigh over Tulane because she and her family felt it would be safer. Had the school warned students that campus crime had increased dramatically and other coeds had been attacked, Jeanne might have locked her dorm door. She […]
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