Poken.com, founded in 2007 by Canadian Stéphane Doutriaux, is a social business card that allows you to instantly connect with new friends across social networks when and where you meet them: „Based on the idea that people are on several social networks, we were coming to the conclusion that there is really a need for a tool that would enable us to be connected at all the networks at once“, says Stéphane, who’s also Poken’s CEO, and adds „the real strength behind this excessive poken is the fact that we developed it as a fashion accessory“.
According to Stéphane, Poken has been really taking off in several countries across Europe and is spreading towards the US and Asia: „There are geographical pockets with lots of people having a Poken. Switzerland and the Netherlands are ‚hot beds’ – the main new TV news in Holland even declared Poken the word of 2009.“
There are currently seven Poken models available, but Stéphane says new ones are coming out almost on a weekly basis: „We have a lot of fun when we see people selecting their poken – it reflects a little bit of their personality.“ Pokens are sold both through retail and a viral distribution network. They are also sold in packs of 12 with a 40% discount on Poken’s website so they can be spread amongst friends: „You make points every time you sell a poken and also every time you poken your friends“ explains Stéphane, „the more points you have, the bigger discounts you get.“
Stéphane points out „that we are never done with the challenges and create challenges for ourselves: We are working on new products and pushing into new markets – there’s a new product line coming out in a few months.“ Poken aims to break even „far sooner than most web startups. If we find the right environment it becomes really easy to sell. At SCS09 almost 90% of the participants bought a Poken. We didn’t see lots of business card exchanges, but a lot of people were pokening“, says Stéphane.
He finds that „innovation is a must and typical of any company that wants to survive. Also, it’s about getting the right balance between the business model and the product. In our case, what has been really key is finding the right distribution structure and developing a viral marketing scheme.“
More interviews from StartUpCamp Switzerland can be found @ www.tiburon-tv.com
04.03.2009 at 00:03
Sure, customers are paying upfront, but before you have something to sell you have to do the research and the production of the hardware. They seemed to have support form university labs or are a spin-off which reduces the time-to-market, so a very good foundation to be a successful company.
What is the customer’s life time value, how can you keep a continuous cash flow after a sale?
For me it was an OK experience with the Poken devices at LIFT. It is nicer to have a decentralized system where you exchange real vcards and they are stored on the device, so you don’t need to sign up to their service.
06.01.2010 at 23:01
[...] Originally Posted at Tiburon-TV [...]
25.05.2010 at 16:05
[...] very soon and is focussing on getting its API out. Renn believes that competitors Poken (click here for an interview with Poken’s founder Stéphane Doutriaux) and mingle360 „have great products [...]