May 13, 2005
People to watch: Jeff Pokonosky
Title: President and founder
Company: WiggleWireless
Age: 41
Jeff Pokonosky, a former business manager for Qualcomm and Nokia,
started WiggleWireless in Encinitas three years ago as a way to deliver text
messages with news and other information to cell phones.
The first event WiggleWireless delivered text message for was the
Ironman Competition in Hawaii last fall. For $9.95, fans could have updates on
their favorite Ironman athletes as well as other news about the competition
sent to their cell phones in real time.
Beginning next month, WiggleWireless will provide text-message
updates of runners' progress at the Coca-Cola Zero Rock 'n' Roll Marathon in
San Diego.
The service will be supported by advertisers and available at no
cost to anyone who signs up for it on the Web starting later this month.
WiggleWireless said it also plans to begin providing text-message
service for 30 other companies and events, including Youth Runner magazine,
Competitor magazine and the Baltimore marathon.
Why does your company exist?
The idea was to just focus on finding content providers that wanted
to take their content to the wireless market. What I have found is that, for
the people who don't live in the wireless space, it's difficult to understand
the issues with delivering wireless content. We are carrier-agnostic, and we
are technology-agnostic. We don't care what phone you have, or who your
wireless carrier is.
What aspect of your job do you brag about?
The Ironman Competition. We did that successfully.
What was so amazing from the event is that we got e-mails back from
people saying, "We loved it. We would not have tuned in, but we signed up for
the service because it allowed us the freedom to do whatever we were doing that
day, yet still feel like we were there at the competition."
What about your job keeps you up at night?
What keeps me up at night is figuring out how to tell a story over
a mobile phone.
It's not like writing a story in an e-mail to somebody who could
read it whenever they'd like. When you send a text message to a phone, it's
immediate, and you're interrupting them. It's possible they're at school or
having dinner.
You have to be really considerate, and ask yourself, "Is this
something they really want?" That's the magic in storytelling over wireless
phones. It's all about frequency, relevancy and respect.
Tell us something interesting about yourself.
I turned 40 last year and didn't want to spend my money buying a
Porsche because I was investing in my company. But I wanted to do something
really challenging in my life so I went to England to swim the English Channel.
I trained for nine months. But when we got there, all of the hurricanes were
hitting Florida.
So we ended up sitting over there for 10 days then had to go back
home. I never got to swim the English Channel. But it's funny, because it's not
about swimming it. It's about showing up.
