9/25/11

Creating the Future of All Email w/Founder of PowerInbox - Matt Thazhmon

“You Only Fail When You Give Up!” – Matt Thazhmon.

Matt Thazhmon is the Founder and CEO of PowerInbox. Our goal at PowerInbox is to create the future of all email. Prior to founding PowerInbox, Matt was Director of Product Management at PlaySpan (acquired by Visa for $190 million), managing the PlaySpan Monetization Platform. Before PlaySpan, Matt was at Electronic Arts on the Central Online Technologies team, where he architected and implemented the framework/features for the common online experience used on 20 titles on 3 platforms over multiple product years. Matt was awarded patent 7,156,733 B2 for his work on data sharing across EA products.

Matt simultaneously earned his M.S. in Computer Engineering, B.S. in Computer Engineering, Minor in Computer Science and Minor in Business Administration from Drexel University (Magna Cum Laude).

PowerInbox (http://powerinbox.com) turns each email into an app platform. Here is a short intro video http://ping.fm/cK4eq At present we have apps for Facebook, Groupon, Twitter and Google+ The value proposition for users of these services is that when they open emails from these services they can interact with the service right inside the email.

Some examples:
When you get an email from Google+ about someone adding you to a circle, you can add them back right inside the email http://ping.fm/7oq5X
A Fb email lets you comment back on a photo http://ping.fm/0PpBL
A Groupon email shows a live countdown to expiry http://ping.fm/RPK32
A Twitter follow email lets you tweet and follow back http://ping.fm/LlnuH

Do you think the education you’ve invested in helped you on the road to success?

I always knew I wanted to start my own company, but I wanted a strong technical foundation. That is why I pursued an M.S. in Computer Engineering, B.S. in Computer Engineering, Minor in Computer Science and Minor in Business Administration. It was very hard completing all those degrees at the same time, but what it taught me was that I could do anything as long as I put my mind to it.

What was the “break point” or an AHA moment in your career that made you decide to start what you’re currently doing & how did you come up with that Idea?

When I was in management at my previous company, I was just very frustrated with how much time I spent in email. I am always trying to make things efficient and email was this black hole of time that seemed unoptimizable. I soon realized that it was because when email was created 40 years ago, it was modelled on snail mail. However email hasn’t changed much since then, but the world has. Our (tech) world is more realtime, social, collaborative and app platform centric and we want our email to be the same. But it seemed like everyone had abandoned email to work on replacements for email. That’s when I decided that I would work on the future of email because no one else is.

As a young professional, what were some of the mistakes that you made and what did you learn?

Underestimating how longs things will take. Everything takes three times as long as the initial estimate

Not getting to an MVP faster. I would encourage everyone who is working on a startup to build the simplest thing possible first, launch it and then iterate based on customer feedback

What advice can you offer to your readers?

You only fail when you give up. The startups that succeed are the ones that don’t give up.

What do you do for fun & where do you get your Inspiration from?

I am always thinking about PowerInbox and how to make the product better and build the company. That is fun to me.

What is your favorite gadget(s), software(s), website(s) that makes your life easier and more productive?

I try to be as minimalist as possible, but here are some:
Google reader
HTC Thunderbolt
Dell Ultrasharp 30” Monitor

Who would you like to see featured here and why?

For startups that have exited, I’d like to seem more content from their startup days. This Mint marketing plan is a perfect example of the content that would be very valuable and drive a lot of traffic to your site. http://ping.fm/hRSjc

Ways to Connect with Matt:

matt@powerinbox.com
(650) 275 3829
AIM/Skype/Gtalk: mattthazhmon

Linkedin: http://ping.fm/hmMbr

Twitter: http://ping.fm/39Fk5

Facebook: http://ping.fm/taKJB

From: http://ping.fm/lqhVk

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