Year in review

A lot has happened in the last year. Most of the work has gone into our VoIP platform. We have increased the quality of our calls by adding more termination partners. All our termination partners compete for our minutes. When we find one with a cheaper rate to a country, we give him a try. If the quality is as good or better as our previous partner them we select him and lower our rates so that our users can also benefit. Our rates have been lowered by more than 20% this year. Having more partners also gives us more options when the quality of calls is poor in an area. In some cases, we have increased our rates because the quality was just not good enough. Overall, our users are always happy when we can make changes within an hour when the quality to a destination is not good enough.

The biggest difference we noticed dealing with termination partners is that they are now running after us. When we started, some partners didn't even answer our emails. Now they are calling every week to get our minutes. It makes it a lot easier.

We have also invested in our infrastructure, adding more servers to have a better world wide coverage. A few more countries are planned for this year.

Our efforts have been rewarded. We have more than tripled our users and users are staying longer.

We have also launched a new app called WiCall Business. With this app, we use only copper wire call quality. Our servers handling the calls are located right next to the telcos terminating our calls. The call is physically connected to the traditional telephone network, call quality is optimal at a slightly more expensive rate. We had very good results using this app, users are willing to pay more for higher quality.

This year, we plan on launching several new exciting services.

Keep posted

New Rates

We have recently reviewed all our rates. In summary, our rates are on average lower. In some country experiencing political, economical or environmental problems like Libya, USA and Japan, rates have increased. In countries where there is more competition or that are experiencing long time stability, rates have decreased like South Korea and most countries in Europe.

Rates are like the stock market, they reflect the overall health of a country. The lower the rates the more likely the country is healthy. And when rates go down or up, it indicates whether the country is improving or not.

Tribair's point of presence...

Cloud computing is everywhere. Nowadays, I can't open a newspaper without reading the same article again and again about what cloud computing really means and its benefits.

But cloud computing isn't new, it was already there 20 years ago when we were then talking about client-server architecture.

This been said, cloud computing is adding some (interesting) fuzziness in the equation: you don't really know where the "server" is.

The "server" can be a small virtualized slice of a server somewhere in Malaysia, or a cluster of 1,000 machines in Palo Alto, or a cluster of machines distributed in many different locations.

You can see Tribair as a cloud. Do you know where we are? Let me tell you a little bit about our "PoPs".

A PoP is a Point of Presence, where we have VoIP servers. The closer the PoP is to you, the better chance we have to avoid internet hazards (packet loss, latency, jitter…) between you and us, and better the call quality will be.

Now, you got me, we don't just have one dusty server sitting under my desk to run the Tribair service.

We don't have the resources (yet) to have a PoP at every corner… so we had to make choices.

It may be true with Web hosting, but with VoIP, not all "PoPs" are equal. 

The INTER-NET is indeed a very complex INTERconnection of NETworks, and everywhere you have a net, you have "hot spots" we call HUBs.

Hubs like in the airline industry (another inter-net) where, for instance, Atlanta is a HUB for Delta.

Delta's presence in Atlanta is oversized for Delta's local customer based but Atlanta is as a transfer point to get passengers to their intended destination.

When you know where are the Internet Transfer Points, the Internet Hubs, aka Internet Exchange Points, you'll have a pretty good idea where our servers are. The closer we are to a Hub, the closer we are to you!

Free Calls Update

As a startup, we are experimenting different approaches. It's normal to try several scenarios and keep what works best. Our Free Calls app worked extremely well. Users would start the app, listen to an add as they dial their phone number, then listen to an interactive ad trying to sell them something before the phone call gets placed. And finally, the user gets connected for up to 5 minutes for free talking. The app worked great, had lots of users from the start.

The only problem is that we got screwed by VoodooVox, our ad agency. They were promising revenue that just wasn't there. We were loosing lots of money and had to cancel the app. It's really too bad as it was a really good and useful app that had tremendous potential. We were only starting but climbing the App Store rankings very fast.

We will try to find other sources of revenue for the app and relaunch it.

Break Even

As a startup, it's very difficult to get funded. But it is also only the start of the adventure. Getting funded doesn't mean less work and more security, on the contrary. It means you need to answer to investors, you need to maximize their investment. It's also the start of constant differences between the investors and the company. The problem is that both don't have the same goal to start with. Even if the goal is clearly stated in the business plan, it isn't viewed the same way by both parties.

An investor will invest in multiple companies. It knows they won't all make it, but the ones that do will payoff lots more than what they loose with the others. So an investor must push to get the maximum amount of value for the companies that do make it. They are willing to take lots of risks to make it. They don't really care about short term profitability, they want maximum traction, maximum brand name, maximum marketing, maximum burn. They have plans to invest more money in companies that have success to maximize their investment.

But as an entrepreneur, the goal is not the same. If you are part of the companies that fail, you also fail. It's going to be hard to convince another investor to invest in your company. You don't have multiple tries like the investors. You are not willing to risk as much as the investor, your priority is not maximizing burn but making the company profitable by making the right decisions at the right time. Patience is a virtue, but investors unfortunately have little of. A startup is a lot of hard and lightning fast work while holding back investors from spending all the marketing budget in the first month of launch. By becoming profitable, the company doesn't depend on raising another round and convincing new investors and old ones that the company will be a big success. The biggest advantage of becoming profitable is that the company decides when and if it needs another round and at what cost. It doesn't become a question of survival.

At Tribair, we have become profitable within a year of raising our first round, it was our goal from the start and it was shared with our investors. We have even surpassed our previsions which must be very rare in the startup world, and we get along with our investors just fine thank you.

418 Android devices, and counting

Our users are calling with Tribair on over 400 devices. New devices keep popping up almost every day. We have spent tremendous efforts in trying to keep up and test all these devices. Our app has recently been improving on all aspects. Downloads, calls, ratings, payments and retention are all increasing. The hard work is finally paying. The most important metric, user satisfaction, is increasing.

The problem is we cannot buy all possible phones and test all of them. There are just too many, and the app must work on new phones as soon as they come out, even before we can test. We were fortunate enough to be one of the first Android developers. Google gave us a Nexus One phone, as they did to a few developers, to speed up the development of apps. We also bought the most popular models and a few tablets. Our most popular model is the Galaxy by Samsung.

For the other models, we rely heavily on the Android simulator. We simulate different screen sizes, features and versions. Android hardware developers can do anything they want, there are no restrictions. The key to developing good Android apps is to never assume anything. Always check if the phone has a feature before using it, otherwise it will crash. For example, does the phone have WiFi, 3G, speaker phone, Google maps installed, etc.

Android is clearly taking over the smart phone market. They have so many different alternatives and propositions for the users as opposed to iPhone who has only 3. The key for us is to always keep updated and to reach as many users as possible to offer our solution. We are now very confident with our Android app, marketing can now accelerate knowing that people we reach will be happy with our new Tribair Android app.

New Languages

Our latest version includes 4 new languages: Arabic, Hebrew, Korean and Thai.

Middle East has just passed North America for total number of users. By adding Arabic and Hebrew, the difference should increase even more.

We have also added servers to better support Middle East and Asia. Our coverage is getting better and better, sound delay is being reduced with each new server added to our network. In most cases, the delay should now be almost the same as if the call was placed using a landline.