Jajah - Year One
Today marks Jajah's first birthday and it's as good a time as any to circle back around to my own neglected blog and get everyone up to speed on what Ive been doing. I joined Jajah about 10 months ago and since then, I've been spending most of my time doing the rocketship / start-up thing. Today we announced that Jajah has signed up 2 million users in the first 12 months. We're pleased!
Importantly, these users are from 55 countries, which speaks volumes about the power of marketing 2.0 techniques and also about the global dissatisfaction users everywhere have with their existing phone companies. I'd like to take my fair share of the credit for winning these customers - but the truth is, people are just tired of handing over large checks every month to traditional phone companies and are anxious for a better, cheaper way to stay in touch with their friends and family.
The fun part, from a marketing perspective, is that we've been able to reach these 2 million customers using low-cost social media and public relations. We are now sometimes being compared to traditional phone companies who regularly spend hundreds of dollars on customer acquisition ( Vonage , for example, spends over 300.00 to acquire a new customer) . While we spend something in the neighborhood of 2.00 dollars.
While we treat telephony as a web business, our competitors often use 1.0 marketing techniques. One of the reasons your phone bill is so high is because they are getting you to pay for the TV advertising which tries to win you as a customer - kinda crazy. We would rather use low cost out-reach and viral techniques and then pass the savings to our users. Apparently we are onto something.
The Jajah Year
It's been amazing actually. Unlike many start-ups, you could say Jajah suffers from too much news. Our problem is managing it's global distribution - this is because of the state of the art engineering team that innovates faster than any company I've ever worked with.
Check out the Jajah 12 month milestones:
• October - December 2005 - Sequoia and Globespan invests in JAJAH
• February 2006 - ICQ Founder, Yair Goldfinger joins board
• March 27, 2006 - Global launch
• May 2006 – JAJAH named to “Red Herring 100”
• May 2006 – JAJAH offers scheduled call service
• September 2006 - JAJAH offers conference calling with up to 10 callers
• September 2006 - JAJAH Mobile announced at Fall DEMO and ETRE
• October 2006 - Firefox Integration
• November 2006 - Google Gadget
• December 2006 – Free calls on Christmas - global calling promotion
• December 2006 - Media Integration - T-online, ProSiebenSat1
• January 2007 – JAJAH reaches 1.2 million registered users
• January 2007 - Apple Widget
• February 2007 – JAJAH Mobile Web (for smartphones) is available (my favorite Jajah solution)
• February 2007 - Dynamic Buttons Beta (customized click-to-call options)
• March 2007 – JAJAH named to “Pulver 100”
• March 2007 – Joyent, Gumiyo, call center integration
• March 2007 - Free 411/free Yellow pages
• March 27, 2007 - JAJAH turns one and serves 2 million users
If you want to know how these stories evolved, check out the Jajah Blog, most of these events are chronicled there and it makes an interesting progression of events - from there you can also check out the youtube and flickr presence. And stay tuned, the second year promises to be even bigger than the first and as we like to say around jajah:
" Keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times".
