Business in Vancouver's "How I Did It" feature asks business leaders to explain in their own words how they achieved a business goal in the face of significant entrepreneurial challenges. In this week's issue, Anton Vassiliev, co-founder of startup Gauge Mobile, explains how the failure of QR codes to take off in North America led the startup to pivot to other near-field communication for proximity marketing. Last month, Gauge Mobile was acquired by Toronto's Juice Mobile.
"Before Gauge Mobile, I was working for Neo-Traffic, a media company focused on shopping centres. I saw an opportunity to bring digital tracking into the traditional space using QR codes. I had Flight Centre standing by to do a first campaign with us, and that was a good indication we were on the right path.
"The technology was easy to implement. Marketers got excited and went to town with QR codes. They were using them with very little strategy behind it – just slapping QR codes on anything, providing pretty much zero value to the customer. It was essentially a marketing gimmick. Once customers got a bad taste in their mouths, it was difficult to get them to use it again.
"We decided we can't be tied to one technology, so we started to expand to include near-field communication [NFC]. Our initial vision was to be a technology partner – a self-serve platform that we can offer to agencies and media suppliers to add this technology into their product offering. But being self-serve in a new innovative technology is very challenging because there's a lot of hand-holding involved. We found ourselves working more and more as an agency.
"We weren't quite sure how to pivot. In August of 2011, we applied to Wavefront's accelerator program. They offered office space, which provided access to a number of programs: how to pitch, how to validate market, how to build a team, how to get connected. They opened a lot of doors.
"We started to rebrand and reposition the product. By mid-fall [2011] we had a commitment from NewAd to launch an NFC campaign. We also got introduced to Astral. They kind of gave us an indication we were on the right path.
"Initially, it was not part of our plan [to be acquired]. But we started to realize that we either needed to have a larger mobile offering – offer proximity in addition to other things – or be very well integrated into one vertical.
"In September, I had a recruiter reach out to me. Juice was looking for a digital director of sales for Western Canada. I was not interested in the position, but I mentioned that I like what Juice has done. I got introduced to [Juice CEO] Neil Sweeney. He was really excited about proximity, and it was either him starting from scratch and figuring it out or bringing a small team that's already established in the space on board and letting them run with it." •
