Millennials Spend 750 Hours a Year Texting; Fundamental Applications Launches Anonymous Texting App
C.FUN | 14 hours ago
Vancouver, BC / ACCESSWIRE / December 3, 2014 / According to a recent Experian Marketing Services report, 77% of adult millennials own a smartphone and the average user spends 14.5 hours a week texting and surfing.
Fundamental Applications (FUN-CSE) is launching innovative mobile applications targeted at millennials (technology-centric consumers born between 1980 and 2000) who have an impressive amount of discretionary income.
The company's first product, Serum, is a proprietary mobile chat application which enables users to post questions and have text conversations with a group of their friends anonymously.
"Our goal is to design, develop and launch a quality application that resonates with Millennials and Generation X," stated Fundamental Director and Serum Co-founder Julian Ing in an exclusive interview, "We have created a texting application where people can solicit and receive honest, truthful opinions anonymously. Our target audience is females and millennials who already do everything by smartphone."
Mr. Ing launched his first company at the age of 23 and sold it to a global publisher at 26. He subsequently sold several more companies including Giant Interactive. He also launched Eruptive Games (Kaboom), which earned several accolades as well as partnerships with Zynga and Facebook.
Serum provides control to the users over conversations they initiate, such as adding or removing participants. It goes beyond existing applications such as Whisper and Secret, which permit only one-way conversations. The application is interactive and has viral growth potential built into its DNA.
"If a woman goes shopping for a new dress, she can take a photo, send it to 15 of her friends and invite them to tell her honestly whether she looks fabulous in that dress or not," stated Ing, "That has enormous value because we often distort or misrepresent our opinions in the name of 'politeness'. Serum basically strips that away and says 'Tell me what you really think.'"
Serum users will be acquired via an email contact list or Facebook. Whoever initiates the conversation controls the membership of the group. But Serum is not a free-for-all where you confess something on a forum and wait to see what the public thinks. It's an opportunity for your peers to talk to you frankly without social repercussions.
Ing cites another example of Serum's utility: a 20-something wonders if her partner has cheated on her. She texts 10 of her BFF's to get quick anonymised feedback. 'I doubt it' 'He hit on me 3 weeks ago' 'Didn't want to say anything but saw him at the beach with Sarah.'…etc. The anonymity shield makes the information qualitatively different.
"Serum also has aggressive anti-bullying features," stated Ing, "Firstly, you are only interacting with your friends, not the entire world. That solves a lot of problems. It is also easy to remove someone from a thread, or the application. We also have algorithms running in the background tracking vulgarity, and we have a threshold for it."
As the Serum nears its live launch, Fundamental is shifting its focus from development to marketing. With Beta testing completed, Serum is now available for download in the iTunes store. A multi-phased Public Relations & marketing campaign will be officially launched upon Apple's approval.
Fundamental Applications CEO, Justin Rasekh has spent nine years in the capital markets raising over $100 million for a variety of public companies. He has also has a track record in technology operations, selling software to the world's largest online sports book when he was 19 years old.
"The launch of Serum is our primary focus," stated Rasekh in an exclusive interview, "although we are simultaneously exploring other opportunities. We anticipate additional functionality to Serum as we help shape this niche market in social chat apps."
Rasekh is focussed on user growth and it's not hard to see why. In three years, WhatsApp went from zero to 400m users and sold for $19 billion.
"Julian is brilliant on the development side and he's got a great rolodex of contacts down in the valley," stated Rasekh, "My contacts are European and my expertise is in financing and marketing. We have a very strong partnership with complementing skill-sets. Julian is perfecting the app while I negotiate product placement opportunities for Serum with two of the largest shows on NBC and one on ABC."
Fundamental has formed a partnership with Pink Buffalo Films, a prestigious film, television and commercial production house located in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
"I was asked to create a marketing piece for Serum," stated Mark Fisher, Pink Buffalo Films CEO, "The further we dug into the company and team behind it, the more we liked the idea. So much so, that we bought into the company when it was still private. We're excited to have this be a part of our portfolio of intelligent brands and investments."
Serum is designed to be virally explosive. If you invite 20 friends into a conversation, and each of them starts a conversation with their 20 friends, the numbers can get crazy. As the user-base grows, Ing anticipates partnering with 3rd party companies developing monetization tools for mobile applications.
"While the rest of adults see smartphones and the Internet as revolutionary, for Millennials, they're just part of the natural order of things," stated the Experian report, "Technology and connectivity is not a want for this generation; it's a need."
CONTACT INFORMATION
Justin Rasekh
President & Chief Executive Officer
Telephone: 778-998-4235
Email: justin@funappcorp.com
www.funappcorp.com
SOURCE: Fundamental Applications
Accesswire IA
December 3, 2014 - 12:19 PM EST
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