That’s because the company’s first customer was, and still is, Republican Senate candidate for California, Chuck DeVore.
“I went off to the Republican Party fall convention in California and met with (various) PR teams,” recalls vice-president of sales and marketing Mr. Craig, an engineer by trade with more than 13 years of experience in telecom. He spoke as part of a panel on the topic of social networking at the conference, with an eye to showcasing Purple Forge’s offering.
Mr. DeVore was hooked, he says, and soon afterward incorporated the firm’s MyPolitics mobile campaign solution into his 2010 fight against former HP CEO Carly Fiorina.
It’s a subscription-based service – campaigns pay $8,000 to have the app initially customized for their own use, while also paying service fees going forward – allowing politicians to forward news from various media sources to smartphones, wherein virulent supporters can Twitter or Facebook the message to the masses.
Clients can also poll users in real-time, a huge bonus to those the political field. And while the two say political interest north of the border has been spotty, they’ve signed up a party in the U.K. and worked strategic deals with resellers such as ID_Media of California and Virginia’s RaiseDigital.
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“These resellers are really helping us to expand into other verticals, in particular iPhone apps for political membership organizations wanting to reach out to their membership, particularly around events,” says Mr. Craig. “The best way to grow really fast is to partner with folks who already have customers.”
The company has also signed partnerships with local firms McLoughlin Media and Vancouver’s Canadian Strategy Group.
“We saw the opportunity to provide a compelling value proposition to customers with the combo of mobile and social networking,” Mr. Hurley says. “It lets them reach customers and get very dynamic, real-time feedback – it’s like a pulse-taking. And it provides the opportunity to do things that just weren’t possible before.”
The company currently offers only an iPhone version of the technology, but says it will soon introduce both BlackBerry and Android versions.
“When we looked at the opportunity at its heart, we stepped back and looked at the types of organizations that had the strongest need for this kind of thing. And we’ve found this technology has been quite disruptive and compelling.” - CEO Brian Hurley
Purple Forge has also identified the conference and events market as a new vertical. It’s also attacking the e-government and university services markets, the two men say.
Mr. Hurley, who has been down the startup path before – he co-founded Liquid Computing in 2003, raising over $44 million in financing before departing in 2008 – says the company got its initial sales thanks to technology developed through IRAP and Talent First Program funding.
And while the two are wildly confident in the implications of Purple Forge technology, Mr. Hurley is also confident in his planned exit strategy to sell the company – though it’s one he says he doesn’t plan on executing for “a couple of years.”
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Year founded: 2008
Local head count: 6
Funding to date: $135,000
Product: Mobile applications
Yes I agree, word on this guy is that he has lost touch with the common worker, just ask anyone who had to deal with him at Liquid, not a very nice person to work for!