Startup of the Day - GWeb2

The company of the day is GWeb2, based in Finland. GWeb2 is delivering free Digital Search and Guidance services for local consumer environments. You will find below an interview with Markus Porvari, President and CEO of GWeb2. All the best to them and congrats for being the startup of the day!

Website: www.gweb2.com.

Interview with Markus Porvari, President and CEO of GWeb2

Who are you?

GWeb2 is the Digital Marketing Cloud Computing Company.

We're delivering free Digital Search and Guidance services for local consumer environments through Internet connected Touchscreens and mobile phones. Our platform is offering placement or profile targeted advertisement opportunities for businesses in out-of-home locations.

How do you feel being the most promising ‘company of the day’ per Microsoft?

It proves that we're on the right track and naturally honored amongst our peers to be selected by Microsoft from so many interesting start-ups.

What did you do before creating your company?

Our team was previously working in some of the leading industry IT- companies such as Microsoft and Nokia before founding GWeb2.

How did you get the idea? What s the genesis?

The founding team was interviewing key Internet companies as well as venture capital investors and market analysts in Europe and North America to hear what are the hot new technologies and demands for consumer applications in the future.

What do you sell? What is your company’s mission?

GWeb2 is generating a new channel in the Digital Marketing industry and seeking a dominant place with it's PaaS (Platform as a Service) offering for customers, partners and advertisers for the easiest and fastest way to create, sell and deploy commercial information. The company is building a living economical community where standardized turnkey Digital Marketing services can be produced, rented and delivered worldwide seamlessly across any Internet connected devices.

What is your market?

Our customers are international real estate investment groups and consumer businesses with significant shopping environments wanting to increase sales of products and services driven by high marketing visibility on the premises while offering better customer service and experiences.

Any clients? References? Partners?

We have just recently signed a substantial delivery agreement to distribute the next generation services to 33 shopping centers in the Nordic and Baltic countries for 100 million annual shoppers. Official press releases will follow soon.

Looking for funding? If yes, how much?

Currently the company is seeking for an early stage seed investment to launch international sales activities as one of the fastest growing new high-tech start-ups in Finland based on customer revenues with profitable growth.

How many employees do you have? How many developers?

Currently we employ 5-10 people.

Which platform are you building on? Why?

We are hosting our Cloud Computing Environment in Amazon AWS and our platform is based on open J2EE. Consumer applications are deployed with Microsoft Silverlight 2.

Do you have any Software IP? Is there something that you’re the only one to do on the market?

Yes and we are looking to patent also some parts of our platform technology.

Who’s your role model?

John Chambers, Cisco Systems.

Where do you see opportunities today in the Software/internet areas?

Bringing everyday Internet services, such as product keyword searches and reservations systems in traditional consumer environments, such as shopping centers.

What about the BizSpark Program? What do you think? Are you going to join? Why?

GWeb2 already joined the BizSpark as one the first ones in Finland.

Any advice to young Software entrepreneurs?

Work hard and try to survive, later you'll be rewarded.

Anything else you’d like to say?

Thank you for everyone who is believing to us and is supporting our vision.