Last Thursday, BOKU’s co-founder Ron Hirson presented in front of 350 attendees at Dealmaker Media’s Under The Radar conference in Mountain View, CA. Ron was there to highlight what we were doing as a company and what we were doing to help “beat the odds” and offer some insight for startups presenting on what they could do to succeed. You can view Ron’s presentation by clicking here.
Here are some photos from BOKU’s showing at Under The Radar:
BOKU gear at the Under The Radar conference.
Ron showing Greg Grunberg, from the NBC show Heroes, the BOKU-copter.
Greg Grunberg playing with the BOKU-copter.
Ron being interviewed by BNetTV.com
Ron showing how the BOKU-copter works to BNetTV.com
It’s been a week since the Virtual Goods Summit. A great show put on by Charles Hudson and David Sachs. The last session of the last day had some interesting fireworks. Mike Arrington from Techcrunch traded words with Anu Shukla of Offerpal around the lead-gen business (great summary by VentureBeat here: http://bit.ly/2YLHIl).
I thought it might be worthwhile posting our thoughts on the space as we’re partnered with many of the payments aggregators to provide direct mobile payments, which means our direct-payment button appears in some screenshots near the types of offers that are under review.
We have built BOKU as a direct payments company, in the same category as Paypal, VISA, and other major credit cards. We are purely focused on mobile payments. BOKU does *zero* lead generation, CPA, subscription offers, IQ quizzes or the like. We enable customers to purchase virtual goods and currencies directly (not indirectly) via their mobile phone. The offers that are being discussed in the blogosphere are around those companies that provide subscription services after lead-gen offers like quizzes, IQ tests, or wallpaper downloads, etc. **BOKU does not provide such services.**
BOKU does not target an under-age audience, and avoids entirely the use of any subscription offers and lead generation techniques. In essence, we do the same things that VISA and Paypal do. Our direct payment system is highly secure, and in lock-step with the policies and standards of the credit card industry.
Overall, we think it benefits the industry to have a open discussion around keeping customers safe as it relates to this lead-gen business. We look forward to the results of the efforts of platforms (social networks), games and offer providers to ensure that in the end the industry that we’re all working for, keeps the customer safe and secure, as they are the core of ours, and any business.
Please feel free to contact us with any questions. ron [at] boku dotcom or press [at] boku dotcom.
To view how our service works, see this video here:
Come on out to Universal City to hear BOKU at Digiday:Mobile. Ron Hirson will be on a panel with: Moderator: Meaghan Schaefer, CMO, edo interactive Speakers: Darren Cross, Director of Business Development, Fandango John Trimble, Chief Revenue Officer, Pandora Ian Wolfman, Chief Marketing Officer, imc² Jeanniey Mullen, Global EVP, CMO, Zinio Ron Hirson, SVP […]
Today, we’re happy to announce that we’ve teamed up with Globe GCASH, a leading mobile operator in the Philippines, to create a model for mobile payments of virtual, and eventually, physical goods. Through this great partnership, both companies will extend their reach to a larger international community that we think will benefit from being [...]
Today is a great day for BOKU, and we're excited to share our announcements with the everyone. The first piece of news to share is a new round of funding for BOKU. We received $25 million in a round led by DAG Ventures with participation from Benchmark Capital, Khosla Ventures, and Index Ventures.
Many of you are aware of the tragic 7.0 earthquake that hit Haiti on Tuesday. The impacts to this already impoverished nation are staggering and help of any kind is being sought. We wanted to let you know of a program where mobile payments can be used for donations and we’re reaching out to friends [...]
