Wellington
Given that his presentation was to the MobileTechSummit 2013 , a primary industry focused event, Andrew McPherson’s app analogy was veryapt.
A tractor can be likened to a mobile device, the tool that is driven off the Power Take Off isthe app says the chief executive of ‘ Icestack ’, andof ECONZ an Auckland-based 40 year old enterprisewireless provider.
“The apps that work best help achieve a single task very efficiently,” he says.
Speaking to over 200 attendees at the inaugural MTS2013 in Wellington, McPherson spruikedIcestack, succinctly described as a community-based app to directly connect with industryservices.
Icestack’s a separate gig for McPherson etal as a technology to help people find and interact with good service providers.
(As an aside, ‘Experieco’, as the builders of Icestack are described as McPherson, ‘chiefcollaborator’, Philip Court, ‘big picture visionist’, and Nicky Lowrie, ‘agony aunt’).
It is about to be launched after a year’s perfecting – with America as its first major targetmarket. From their own market research, there’s nothing that achieves this as quickly, easily andpractically as Icestack (though of course he would say that!)
Icestack came about in the first instance when McPherson found it difficult to find a goodplumber for a rural house he was involved with.
His team looked at somehow incorporating social media, though quickly found that sites such asFacebook “aren’t that good in a business sense.”
At the same time, searching for someone via the desktop isn’t that useful as many serviceproviders aren’t present there as such.
Hence the solution goals the team came up with:
In other words people know other (good) people – and by being able to link these connections ina social media sense, an individual can tap into a wider service community.
“In a social-mobile world, social business communities will be the new business clusters,”McPherson says. “Businesses can and should band together to offer combined services in ageographic region.”
The combination of these ideas has resulted in a self-described app that allows people to“find, store, request, rate and recommend your favourite service providers.”
Icestack itself is a free android and Apple app for an individual end-user.
Where Icestack hopes to make its money is by providing it to service providers, who only pay(US$15/month) once they obtain six or more service requests through the app.
As McPherson described offline from MTS2013, Icestack is a ‘moonshot’ for the Experiecogroup.
The job is to as quickly as possible attempt to get the app to go viral, and not be one of theliving dead among an estimated 1.5 million apps that have been developed in what is essentially lessthan half a decade.
Whether the app achieves a single task very efficiently, and individuals and businesses telltheir mates about it – time will tell.