echoecho

Since the widespread adoption of cellular telephony began, the most common question asked, initially by voice and increasingly by text and e-mail is “Where are you?” Even with the increased ability of smart and feature phones to know their location and the improved triangulation and wifi technologies to find handsets (including GPS), there is still no easy and fast way to ask and answer that question. 
Echoecho asks and answers the question “Where are you?” in a manner that does not sacrifice user privacy or security, and with simplicity and speed that makes it a preferred (and often safer) alternative to texting or calling.

Nick Bicanic, CEO – Strengths – Leadership, Technology and Market Vision

Mr. Bicanic is a multi-skilled entrepreneur with 15 years of experience in the technology sector. He brings to echoecho a cutting edge clarity of vision combining his experience in marketing, human computer interfaces, multimedia and technological development. Prior to founding Purpose Wireless in 2008, Nick successfully founded, ran for 6 years and eventually sold DeltaBravo Ltd., a commerce solutions company, whose innovative software approaches revolutionized e-commerce in the UK and Europe, with clients including Zoom.co.uk, Arcadia Group and Virgin Music. After selling DeltaBravo, Nick continued to consult and manage some of the larger projects for the company on a contract basis. 
Earlier in his career, Nick created a number of award-winning cross-media marketing campaigns for clients such as Financiere Richemont AG, Zanussi, Warner Brothers. He also contributed to two books published by Microsoft Press and numerous articles in Wired magazine.
A natural leader, Nick is an accomplished windsurfer and helicopter pilot and also directed an award-winning documentary, "Shadow Company" about the re-emergence of private soldiers in modern warfare. He holds an M.A. and a B.A. in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge, UK.

Remy Kozak, COO – Strengths: Marketing, Finance & Operations

Mr. Kozak, is an entrepreneur and product/marketing specialist with 20 years experience in the telecoms sector. Remy has developed business plans, set up operations, and assisted in fund-raising for a wide range of companies both locally and abroad. Prior to founding Purpose Wireless in 2008, Remy was CEO and VP Corp Dev for Power Air Corporation, a publicly traded developer of metal-based fuel cells located in California.
Remy's background in technology marketing and planning is complimented by experience in finance, sales, and operations. Mr. Kozak was previously a partner at ARK executives, a European interim management firm, where he held a variety of Interim roles including Business Unit Manager, COO and VP Finance and assisted in the build out of Europe’s first mobile business incubator (iWorld Group). Prior to ARK, Mr. Kozak worked for several years as a senior director with Global One Telecommunications, SA in Brussels where he built up and managed the Planning, Strategy and Finance departments for both the Global Accounts and Internet divisions. 
Remy holds an M.B.A. from the University of British Columbia, and a B.A.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Simon Fraser University.

Davor Dubokovic, Technical Advisor – Strengths: Programming, Databases, Architecture

Davor designed the revolutionary asynchronous messaging system that underpins the echoecho architecture and allows echo messages to be seamlessly relayed in a platform and carrier agnostic method. Prior his work with Purpose Wireless, Davor delivered a number of high profile e-commerce projects in the UK for Arcadia Group and zoom.co.uk. When zoom.co.uk was acquired by Easynet PLC, Davor became the Strategic Development manager at Easynet.
Davor continued to innovate within Easynet subsidiary UKOnline and BSkyB, leading and managing multiple technical development teams and projects – rapidly incorporating into his skill set the latest tools available including cloud computing architectures.
A consummate software architect, Davor is fluent in multiple programming languages but his key area of excellence is database design and management. Davor holds an MSc (Computer Science) from the University of Zagreb (Croatia).

Andrew Wanliss-Orlebar, Brand/Product Advisor – Strengths: Marketing & Branding

At Purpose Wireless, Andrew heralds the consumer perspective across all products. Chief marketeer, user experience guru and full time enthusiast, he relentlessly manages everything that can be touched, used or seen for the company. A web pioneer and serial entrepreneur since the early days of Web 1.0, Andrew launched Primary Group, one of the first web development agencies and Total New York, one of the first advertiser-supported online properties. After selling his ventures to AOL and Omnicom, Andrew went on to advise the likes of Time Warner, BT, Virgin and Commonwealth Bank on their digital strategy. He led several large-scale corporate Internet projects from concept to deployment, managing global development teams.
In recent years, as a senior inventor at What If Innovation, he helped FORTUNE 500 companies create new value and growth. Bringing together consumer insight, business trends and technology to define business opportunities, Andrew has brought new products, services and brand propositions to market in 16 countries, for such clients as Unilever, Citigroup, American Express and Coca-Cola. An established expert in sustainable innovation and technology, he has notably worked on new consumer devices and services for Vodafone, Samsung, and SKTelecom. 
Andrew holds a BA in Marketing and Communication from the University of Pennsylvania and an MA from the University of Technology, Sydney.

Since the widespread adoption of cellular telephony began, the most common question asked, initially by voice and increasingly by text and e-mail is “Where are you?”

Even with the increased ability of smart and feature phones to know their location and the improved triangulation technologies for handsets to locate themselves until now there has been no easy, fast and secure way to ask and answer that question - in other words - to share your location with your friends and colleagues.

Echoecho solves this problem without sacrificing privacy or security - always keeping the user experience in mind - with every aspect of the service focussed on four simple maxims - SPEED, SIMPLICITY, UTILITY and PRIVACY.

While echoecho provides value to consumers, Purpose Wireless is NOT counting on consumers for revenues. The company intends to leverage the growing consumer base by:

a) developing a series of paid B2C and B2B applications such as ChildMind (for simple and safe monitoring of your children), CabFind (for a virtual hail - an exchange of location with a cab company) , and CreditLoc (helping credit companies minimise false positives in transaction fraud) 
b) embedding location-specific ads in the maps on various screen and even making suggestions of meeting places for individuals and groups.
c) opening an echoecho API that allows developers of online applications to add a location component to their user experience. Such developers will have free access to a sandbox and will pay for wider access to the user base while helping to expand it.

The Company is also approaching handset manufacturers, mobile operators and smartphone operating system developers. The top smartphone OS developers (Google, Apple, Nokia, RIM, Microsoft and HP/Palm) are locked in a battle to attract consumers to their platform. As hardware functionality converges, it is increasingly “software availability” that acts as a differentiator in consumer purchase decisions. With Apple holding a significant lead in terms of available application, the other OS developers are playing catch up and are eager to find an edge. 

SIMPLE, FAST, USEFUL.

These are fairly fundamental advantages. In a market segment crowded with near identical check-in services like Gowalla, Foursquare, Brightkite - that are mostly solutions in search of a real problem...echoecho actually solves a real problem for people and for business.

It's not a game - it's a utility. It seeks to only do one thing (ask and answer the question "Where are you?") and it seeks to do it extremely well.

Not only does echoecho provide the only usable, friendly and private location sharing system in the world but the whole platform has been designed from the ground up with an open API - allowing development of unique B2C applications leveraging echoecho's user base and infrastructure.