This comes from the online journal of a current Wharton student. I thought this was a great idea for a business, and encourage you American readers to use it (and save yourself some money) next time you need to call information.
_____________________________________________
I was offered the opportunity to work with a local venture fund, Liberty Associated Partners, based on my work with Wharton's Small Business Development Center (SBDC).
I was at Liberty, a Philadelphia-based evergreen fund with a "few hundred million" in deployed capital, for less than a month. In those four short weeks, though, I had the good fortune to work closely with one of their portfolio companies, Jingle Networks, whose main (actually, currently only) business is 1-800-FREE-411, a free directory assistance service (http://www.free411.com).
As opposed to dialing 411 and paying $1.50-plus to Verizon (VZ) or whomever your landline or cell-phone carrier is, you call 1-800-373-3411 and get your number for free in exchange for listening to a short, usually 10-second, advertisement. It's a slick little Google (GOOG) model and a ridiculous value proposition for end users. As one of the VCs investing in Jingle often remarked, the business model was great because it shrank a large market.
________________________________________________
2 comments:
I had heard about this previously but dialed 411FREE instead of FREE411 and got a solicitation for phone sex, and it wasn't for free!
Or you can just send a text with the desired location or information to the number: g-o-o-g-l-e (466453)and they text back with the number and address. This way you don't accidentally call the phone sex operator and you can easily store the number in your phone with the click of a button. gotta love technology!
Post a Comment