Of all the interesting new tech that seems poised to garner a lot of buzz in 2011, near field communication (NFC), is probably the most exciting. If it takes off, it will transform the ways we communicate, share, and make payments with digital devices. This will likely take years to happen, but the groundwork is being laid right now. And RFinity is one of those companies at the forefront.
While Google and Apple are responsible for generating much of the buzz about NFC at the moment, the technology goes far beyond simply having the right type of chip in your mobile device. For example, how do you handle different types of data transfers being made from one device to another? And how to you ensure that they happen as quickly as possible? And most importantly, how do you ensure that they happen securely? Those are the things that RFinity is thinking about.
The company has just raised $4 million from Horizons Ventures in Hong Kong. And the space has gotten so red hot, in fact, that we hear they’re already out raising another round.
And it’s an easy bet for investors to make not only because of the space, but because of where the project originated: The U.S. Department of Energy. Specifically, RFinity was born when a bunch of infrastructure security experts working for the government were assigned to find all the vulnerabilities in cell phones. Through software they came up with, they were able to quite easily eavesdrop, manipulate SMS messages, and even compromise LAN security. Then they set out to figure out a way to stop people from doing those very things. That work led directly to RFinity.
Work originally began in the person-to-person and person-to-vendor sales space by way of mobile applications that route transactions through RFinity’s own secure servers. But now that NFC appears ready, RFinity is making sure they’re ready for it. The idea is that their technology could cut out the middle man here: themselves.
Obviously, the company isn’t going to share all the details on how they secure NFC transfers. But the basic overview is that they verify an incoming NFC signal and ask for a user’s permission before taking any action. Further, if the action is a transaction, it requires a PIN, just as you might do an ATM withdrawal. That’s all pretty standard. But the key is one-time-use transaction codes that RFinity creates on the fly along with complex cryptographic signatures. These ensure that an transaction is secure since it means that every transaction can only happen once. Even if those numbers were intercepted by a hacker, they would be useless beyond the one-time payment.
And even if your phone is lost or stolen, a thief couldn’t do anything without your PIN. And you can remotely shut down your NFC capabilities via RFinity. It’s enough to make me wish I could throw out all my credit cards right now. “Today’s identification and transaction systems are based on what? A magnetic strip on the back of a card, based on a 1950’s technology that relies on a base station to read the information embedded as a series of simple magnetic markers in plastic tape,” writes Josh Jones-Dilworth, who is working with the company to bring them to market.
Again, NFC as a technology is great and potentially game-changing. But the software is still needed to make it actually work. And some of the big guys began realizing that early on as companies like PayPal, Bank of America, and even Subway have been testing out different things with RFinity for some time. In fact, RFinity has actually been doing field tests of the software end of their technology since 2009 in places like Idaho, well before most people in the U.S. had ever thought about NFC.
But now people are starting to care. And soon, they could be caring a lot more. NFC is already built-in to Google’s new Nexus S device — and the company has put out a call for developers to start using the tech. Rumors have the next iteration of the iPhone gaining the technology as well. In other words, I suspect we may be seeing acquisition rumors starting to fly around RFinity in about six months or so. Provided their technology proves up to the NFC challenge, of course.
Marco Arment, the former CTO of the Tumblr blog platform, is best known these days for his time-shifting reading app Instapaper. But he could start a side-job as a financial advisor to start-ups. His motto: Get the money from your customers, not investors.
Arment’s more traditional take is built largely on the idea that if he puts out a good product, there’s no shame in asking customers to pay for it. And the more they pay, the less he needs to rely on outside investors. Arment said many developers are of the mindset that they need to amass a huge number of eyeballs through free services. But they don’t focus enough on building a solid product that can command loyalty and payment from consumers, and instead try to gain profitability through advertising and turning to outside venture capital.
By contrast, Arment says his efforts to monetize Instapaper have been successful because he was able to leverage the hard work he put into his paid versions and the good will he’s gotten back from consumers. And that has allowed him to avoid outside funding, something he plans on doing for the forseeable future.
Don’t Take Funding if You Don’t Need It
“If a service can be profitable and breakeven without VC money, you don’t need to take it,” Arment told me in an interview. “There’s no reason for developers to get a lot of users without charging. There’s another path. My goal is to spread that message: Charge for something and make more than you spend.”
Arment launched Instapaper as a free website in January 2008 and became profitable later that fall when he first began selling a paid iPhone app alongside a free version. He’s been profitable ever since. Arment won’t disclose his revenue, but he said he can cover his expenses and can afford to hire a couple more people if he needed. He left his Tumblr job in September to devote himself to Instapaper.
Though Arment maintains a free iPhone app, he said the focus of the company has been on the paid versions which are updated first (a new update is expected in the next month or so). He has yet to release a free iPad version and has only gotten three emails about the lack of it. Most seem happy to pay for the $5 iPad version. Between 25 and 33 percent of people pay for the $5 paid iPhone version. In fact, as an experiment, he pulled the free iPhone app from the app store for a week a little while back and found that only one person emailed. Sales of the paid version didn’t go up, but they didn’t go down either, he said.
“The free version isn’t really competing as much as I expected with the paid version; a lot of people go straight to the paid version,” he said. “It was only a week but the people who were going to the free version would not have gone to the paid version.”
Let Users Thank You by Paying You
That’s what’s allowed Arment to really focus on the paid segment. In fact, he still questions the value of the free version at times because it can leave a more negative impression for users with its limited set of features. Arment said his paying users have surprised him with their support. He started a $1 a month subscription plan in October that didn’t actually offer much in the way of extra features. It was more of a way to let users show their support for Instapaper. He said the response was overwhelmingly positive.
“That was a huge surprise to me how well it’s doing given there’s no real incentive to do it besides good will. But it ends up that good will is powerful,” Arment said. “It shows that people will pay for something they like because they want to ensure its future.”
Arment is testing the theory again with a new API that leverages his subscription plan. For developers who want to build apps with Instapaper integration, Arment said last month he will require their users to subscribe to Instapaper. Again, the response has been very positive, said Arment. Two hundred developers have applied to get access to the API. All this money-making has allowed Arment to sidestep venture capital money. He has had repeated offers, but Arment said accepting VC funding is akin to taking on a new boss, and the act of raising and maintaining money is a full-time job, he said.
Venture Capital Is Like Having Another Boss
“If you can go without funding, you can be a one- or two-person shop without a whole level of bosses,” he said. “You’re not worried about getting more money and getting diluted anymore.”
Arment’s approach doesn’t work for everyone. He was fortunate to be able to this as a side job and build it up while at Tumblr. And he acknowledges that the lack of funding could be a problem if he wanted to build a staff quickly. But he believes his experience shows that a more old-school approach to building a business and developing a following with consumers is a viable one for entrepreneurs that should be explored more. He may not the biggest company, but he can be a profitable one for a while.
“I don’t need the entire market,” Arment said. “I can get five percent of the market and be rich.”
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