The team here at Jelli was recently honored by being named a finalist for the2013 Red Herring Top 100 awards, which recognizes cutting edge, private companies that are poised for exponential growth in the near term future. We were thrilled to receive this recognition amongst so many great companies that are making their mark in a whole host of different industries. We also had the opportunity to present what Jelli is building to the Red Herring community during their conference in Monterey, and we were inspired by what the talented teams behind the companies vying for the award are creating. We thank the Red Herring team for the recognition and the opportunity.
At the event this year, we were struck by a common ingredient in many of the most disruptive Finalists: applying cloud-based platforms to low-tech industries. From our point of view, the most exciting part of what is going on in the cloud based revolution is how some companies, ourselves included, are applying the technology to more traditional, long standing and often “off-line” business. By doing so, we are all providing a new path for these businesses to grow in a super competitive environment by:
1) easing the use and broadening access of their products for their customers;
2) increasing transparency radically for users;
3) significantly shortening the time-to-innovation and release cycle versus traditional software models; and
4) unlocking the potential in “big data” and analytics in the cloud.
An often mentioned example during the Red Herring conference was Uber, who have been rolling out their car service and taxi ordering service via their app and website to over twenty cities to date. Similarly Taxi Magic has also made strong inroads in taking a historically very offline business online. Seamless has applied the concept to create a one stop solution behind restaurant delivery (further bolstered by the recently announced merger with Grubhub). Red Herring finalist Jumio launched a product called Netverify to take the decidedly offline ID verification process (from passport to drivers license to beyond) online. That should present some interesting applications at bars across America.
It doesn’t stop there though. Practice Fusion, a company that started by helping the medical profession to bring health records online, is now leveraging that installed cloud-based infrastructure to expand their product offerings into enabling patients to schedule with doctors online through Patient Fusion, even to the point of being able to choose a different doctor to meet their schedules.
Although Jelli and Practice Fusion couldn’t be more different in the industries we operate in, Jelli similarly has been able to leverage the power of a cloud platform to an ever expanding list of products and tools for partners and users, from our ad network to our cloud apps that let agencies see in real time the progress of their campaigns, to future enhancements for radio network operators that we will be rolling out over the coming months.
Radio is a massive space and continues to be a key part of the advertising and media worlds, and we know that applying our cloud based innovations to this medium will achieve for radio what cloud solutions have already achieved for other industries.
