Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: David Stone, CEO of CashStar (Part 4)

SM: Oh, I see. So, the electronic gift card can be used at a store.

DS: Exactly. We’re connecting the online and physical world. In fact, most of the cards – and there are millions that we’ve done – can be used in the physical world. It has a bar code on it, and you walk into CVS or BestBuy or wherever, and it gets scanned just like a coupon or anything else. Or you can bring it in on your mobile phone. Some retailers, like Starbucks, scan it instantly off the phone. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: David Stone, CEO of CastStar (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: That’s not what I want to know, though. I want to know what are the dynamics of the business model?

David Stone: The dynamics of the business model are three core dynamics. First, you have to get the retailers that are offering the cards because without the retailers, you don’t have anything. The retailers provide the currency. Sixty percent of our retailers, heading into Christmas, provided an e-gift card offering of some sort. When we started the company, only 5% did. In 2010, before Christmas, it was about 40%. So, we’ve seen that grow twelve-fold. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: David Stone, CEO of CashStar (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: So, you’ve been following the payments industry and the digital loyalty industry quite closely.

David Stone: Right, and it’s that intersection that is my sweet spot: the digital consumer, how people pay and build loyalty, and how they give gifts and reward, and the confluence of those circles. And let me just say – for what it’s worth – that I’ve been recognized as a Top 5 entrepreneur in prepaid and as a mass high-tech luminary, which is a big deal since it’s New England. There are a lot of high techs in New England. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: David Stone, CEO of CashStar (Part 1)

Whether you love them or hate them, gift cards have found a place for themselves in our society. Employers use them as rewards and consumers give them to friends and family members for birthdays, graduations, even weddings, especially when they don’t know exactly what to buy. CashStar, based in Portland, Maine, has come up with a simpler, more secure way for people to send gift cards:  the e-gift card. Given the popularity of shopping online, the introduction of an e-gift card seems like the next logical step.

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Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Doyon Kim, CEO of Pangalore (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: They are more powerful, which makes it a PR nightmare. So, you don’t have a solution to this. You observe a problem; I observe a problem. There is no solution. We’ll just have to deal with this muck. It is an open problem, don’t you think?

Doyon Kim: It is, yes. It is becoming a more serious problem. I read a book about five years ago – and I don’t remember the title of the book, and at the time I didn’t like it – that was criticizing the Web 2.0 movement. What they were saying, basically, is this Web 2.0 thing gives too much power to amateurs, and anybody can be an expert. Anybody can be influential with this new Internet. Because I was in the Web 2.0 industry, I didn’t like the tone at the time, but now I kind of agree. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Doyon Kim, CEO of Pangalore (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: That was my impression also, that cross-promoting using each other’s ad inventory that is not being sold, because nobody wants to advertise. There is a huge amount of unmonetized ad inventory.

Doyon Kim: And also, it’s a very targeted audience.

SM: It’s a very targeted audience, yes. So, barter is one of the trends in the industry. I see that, too. Is there any other major trend you’re seeing in gaming? One of the observations you were making – and I’m in sync with that – is that Zynga came into Facebook before all of these privacy settings came together. So, the virality was still there. And then anybody who came in before there were privacy settings with which the virality could be turned off used Facebook virality to scale up. But it’s no longer viable. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Doyon Kim, CEO of Pangalore (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: It’s an execution game.

Doyon Kim: Right. And we don’t expect people to play our games for three years or four years. Yes, they can copy it, but we have a head start.

SM: So, your strategy is to continuously come up with cross-platform games, keep using the user base, and market new games to them.

DK: Yes. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Doyon Kim, CEO of Pangalore (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What are the top five things you need to do when you design a game to be a cross-platform social and mobile game?

Doyon Kim: One thing is you have to understand the technology. One way to do it is have one game for this platform and completely rewrite everything, maybe use the graphic assets for another platform, but that’s a doubling of resources. There are a couple of technology platforms that enable this multi-platform development. One of them is HTML 5, but you have to understand what it can do. HTML 5 is not really designed for gaming. >>>