Earlier today Ambient Vector launched their new mobile service, Nakama. We think they’re interesting. Judge for yourself.
One Degree: Who needs you?
Nakama lets anyone with a mobile phone capture, publish, share and view pictures and videos. We want to get everyone with a cameraphone using Nakama, and sharing their pictures and videos.
One Degree: Why do they need you?
Nakama is (to us) the easiest way to share pictures and videos: something almost everyone with a cameraphone wants to do. We’re also really focused on entertaining people… phones today have great displays and fast networks, so they’re an obvious choice to kill some time, browse a few pictures, watch a few videos, and be entertained, and this is something Nakama is especially good at.
One Degree: Why are you interesting?
We’re not sure that we are :-), but we’re flattered you asked. We’re a small team, with great backers, and great people. We’re also solving a whole lot of hard technology problems that are hidden by our focus on making the user experience as clean and simple as possible.
One Degree: How do you make money?
Nakama makes money three ways:
# Premium services (more hosting, special content, etc.) – There are a ton of parallels in the web and mobile world here.
# Advertising – Mobile banner ads are cute (and lucrative), but we’re also looking at interesting opportunities like using Flash and video ads on mobile.
# We’re not telling – Nakama’s got what we think is a huge opportunity to build an ecosystem. Sound vague? Yeah… but you’ll see soon enough. We promise.
One Degree: What is your mission?
Oh, the meaning in a word… Nakama loosely translates to “Circle of Friends” in Japanese (it also translates to “useless” in Urdu, but you can’t win ’em all). We want people to use Nakama every day to publish special moments in their lives, connect with their friends, and entertain themselves on the metro.
One Degree: Who are you?
Ambient (the makers of Nakama) is a small software startup, made up of a small management team, with amazing engineers, and fortunate enough to have a stellar advisory board, and tier-1 venture capital backers behind us.
One Degree: Where are you?
We’re based in downtown Toronto, a block or so from King and Spadina. Send us a note if you’re in the neighborhood.