Featured Startup Pitch: DataXoom offers data services designed to address the pain points of the mobile enterprise workforce

By John Tantum, DataXoom co-founder and CEO

Elevator Pitch: DataXoom provides mobile data services for medium- and large-sized businesses. We connect tablets, mobile hotspots, and specialty devices to cellular networks, offering improved controls and lower costs.

Market Opportunity

Twenty-five million mobile data devices, including cellular-enabled tablets, laptops, and hotspots, will be sold in the U.S. annually for the next several years. Enterprises will drive a large part of this growth.

As network technologies become standardized around LTE, we believe the enterprise market will evolve away from the current, carrier-centric model. This current carrier model offers enterprises services that are only slightly-modified consumer offerings, with many painful ‘gotchas’ like two-year contracts, termination penalties, device restrictions, and data caps.

At DataXoom, we’ve designed our business entirely around the needs of mid- and large-sized businesses. DataXoom only provides mobile data services, and only sells to businesses. Our technology platform offers more flexibility, better control and lower costs.

Product

DataXoom has wholesale relationships with three of the nation’s largest wireless service providers. We offer our customers a choice among multiple mobile networks, including the latest 4G LTE networks.

When compared with buying directly from a mobile operator, DataXoom’s mobile data services provide several unique and important advantages:

DataXoom has no contracts or termination penalties.
DataXoom’s mobile data pricing options include pay-as-you-go plans, two-to-ten GB plans that pool across all users, and multi-terabyte plans that can be customized for specific business requirements.
DataXoom’s proprietary technology platform allows an administrator to manage users through a single web interface, often across multiple underlying mobile networks. It provides information that is critical for an enterprise, such as user authentication, data limits or caps, and usage alerts. DataXoom provides large companies much greater control and visibility of their employees’ mobile data devices and wireless spend.
Existing devices (tablets, cellular modems, etc.) can typically be re-used for DataXoom’s service, or DataXoom can provide affordable new or refurbished devices. DataXoom has expertise in acquiring and delivering devices that are ready-to-use on its network.
DataXoom also offers tablet-and-service bundles, in which the lease cost of the device is packaged with the monthly data service. The enterprise pays a single, low price for each unit deployed.

Sales and Marketing Strategy

DataXoom is revolutionizing mobile data for business. We’re off to a fast start in our sales and marketing efforts, with several major customers, including some of the largest U.S. companies. In addition to selling directly to enterprises, we’ve developed distribution partnerships with a handful of closely-related software and service providers.

Team’s Story

I was founder and president of Virgin Mobile USA, which grew to five million customers and is now a brand within Sprint. At Virgin, we focused on meeting the needs of a specific segment of customers, and we bring that same approach to DataXoom. My senior colleagues spent many years at Nextel selling mobile services to enterprises, and have extensive experience running wireless startups.

Current Needs

We are looking to hire a few great people in sales, operational and developer roles. We may pursue a round of growth capital later in 2014.

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Headquarters: Pleasanton, California