A couple of changes in the lineup. What can I say... welcome Houston!!! and so long MsgMe.
We're now getting ready for the launch of the iPhone in London on 11/8. Our SMS folks could not support us overseas so we're having to go with a new partner... sorry all for the downtime.
We hope the UK is ready for iPling!
Well... summer started out with a big bang and a few weeks ago we passed the two thousand registered beta plingers mark. We're amazed by such strong reception mainly because we've done nothing on the marketing front except for a press release the day the iPhone launched here in the U.S. We're happy to see that a catchy trademark and the right timing can go a long way!
Thanks all for the encouraging emails and the feedback on how to make the application better. We're testing lots of features and will be making constant updates so please bare with us for a while... ;))
Posted by Manuel Monroy on July 17, 2007, at 2:15 p.m. PST
Last week I was invited by Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Secretary to give a speech to Mexican entrepreneurs living in the US and Mexico on how Silicon Valley works. About 50 people flew down from all over the US, who were joined by some 100 local high-tech entrepreneurs down in Mexico City. We all spent three days crossing ideas on how we can take advantage of cross boarder opportunities by addressing the needs of the 26 million Mexicans living on this side of the boarder. Satisfaction feelings aside from motivational speeches, I came out of the trip with a clear opportunity for iPling – one for which we have the support of a couple of Mexican government agencies. So here is a hint (political implications aside)… what best social use of iPling than to provide migrants with the tools to find folks from their hometowns? you may not know but every year hundreds of thousands of migrants come from Latin America looking for friends and relatives that arrived before them. Who knows… maybe our initial call to fame will be through a little contribution to human rights!
Posted by Manuel Monroy on July 4, 2007, at 9:15 a.m. PST
The iPhone launch met our (very high) expectations. We gave out our iPling stickers to hundreds of people standing in line in San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York city. I was truly quite amazed to see so many folks lined up for hours to get their hands on the little gadget… my hat off to Apple for creating such consumer buzz. We enjoyed talking to all kinds of people and were able to get lots of feedback on iPling. By the end of the day we came out with a long list of pending features for Michael and Dax to work on. For the most part we stayed out of trouble, although a couple of Apple security guys in LA asked Jud to leave, which didn’t seem quite right since people were intrigued talking to him and he was only exercising his freedom of speech ;))
Posted by Manuel Monroy on June 29,
2007, at 4:02 a.m. PST
It's 4 in the morning on the day the iPhone launches and we're at
Michael's design lab down in
Since then it's been quite a journey refining our concept, forming a
team and bootstrapping the prototype, and we can't wait to begin writing
stories about our experiences so far. The thing is that we need to get
back to work and then we have to hit the road to LA and then back to San
Francisco to give out our little pucks at all Apple stores along the
way, so the story writing will have to wait a bit.
Thanks Carlos, Michael, Scott, Jud, Samir, Peter and Dax (and Kris) for believing
in the vision.
Let's do it!
