As reported on the Chronicle’s blog, Campus Wired, the giant of online course management system, Blackboard, has announced yesterday at its user conference BBWorld its acquisition of the start-up Terriblyclever Design LLC specialized in mobile application development and behind the MobilEdu suite.
Blackboard paid about $4 million for this small company started by students from Standford.
In May this year, while I was working on my upcoming column about mobile marketing for University Business, I had the opportunity to ask a few questions to one of the co-founders of Terriblyclever Design, Kayvon Beykpour.
1) Before launching your business, you were students. In that context, can you explain why you decided to design and develop an iPhone application targeted to college students?
As Computer Science students at Stanford, who were particularly interested in technology, we had the opportunity of being both consumers and producers of the “newest” and “coolest” technologies on campus. “Mobile” is a perfect example. We all loved the iPhone. We thought it represented the beginning of an incredibly powerful new medium and development environment– one that presented many more opportunities for interesting developments than other mobile platforms. We also were fascinated by how people were and could be using mobile devices. We were in the perfect environment to notice such things. We’d walk around campus and see people using their iPhones in different environments– we ourselves would discover new ways that the iPhone was useful and ask ourselves “how could this great device be used for other things– other things we do on a day-to-day basis”. Some of the common answers to these questions were based our tasks that every student on campus needs to do, like searching the campus map or searching the directory or checking their class schedule. That’s what led us to ultimately create a utility that serves a university audience– both students and faculty.
2) Can MobilEdu work on other mobile devices (Blackberry, Google Phone, etc.)?
Currently, MobilEdu operates on a few different formats:
– A native iPhone application
– An XHTML website for newer phones like Blackberrys and any other web-enabled device with a browser
– A WAP website for older phones (say old Nokia’s or old Blackberrys) with the existing browser on those devices.
– We are constantly observing new developments wth native platforms (like the native blackberry platform, android, etc.) and plan to support these platforms in the future.
3) As you try to market your application suite, do you think that higher ed institutions are ready to cater to the needs of their “mobile” students?
I think Universities are realizing more and more than addressing the “mobile” need is a significant and important step. MobilEdu represents a very sensible starting point for Universities since it’s fundamental purpose is to empower those with mobile devices, which is why we’ve had great reception among our initial customer base.
