A Q&A with Adtile founder and CEO Nils Forsblom. The Los Angeles–based company secured $2.7 million in Angel funding earlier this month. Forsblom is a serial entrepreneur who previously built Fruugo—an international online shopping marketplace. Adtile was built and incubated by Forsblom’s TenFarms development company.
SUB: Please describe Adtile and your value proposition.
Forsblom: Adtile offers revolutionary solutions for branding and monetization of mobile-based apps and web. We provide a very unique and compelling experience to app developers and publishers.
SUB: Who are your target markets and users?
Forsblom: We focus on the mobile publishing space globally, whether they are large or small.
SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?
Forsblom: All mobile advertising networks—Google’s AdMob and alike.
SUB: What differentiates Adtile from the competition?
Forsblom: We believe the best way to revolutionize mobile advertising is to create an entirely new design that embraces the needs of mobile users and publishers, making it part of the user experience. Adtile respects apps by not hijacking the screen to display banners, but instead lets developers have a say in where ads are displayed and how they look and feel.
SUB: When was the company founded and what were the first steps you took in establishing it?
Forsblom: Everything starts with product innovation and design. Establishing a company is secondary. It’s just a vehicle for business execution.
SUB: What was the inspiration behind the idea for Adtile? Was there an ‘aha’ moment, or was the idea more gradual in developing?
Forsblom: The idea originated from my personal experience and frustration of trying to navigate mobile apps with annoying banner ads. I also believe that publishers and developers needed far better solutions to monetize their apps. Now they have to design their apps around the advertisement. We believe it should be the other way around.
SUB: How did you come up with the name? What is the story behind it?
Forsblom: The name originates from how our mobile advertisement experience functions—they work as tiles. I came up with the name looking at an old fireplace made of tiles while traveling in Europe.
SUB: You recently secured $2.7 million in Angel funding. Why was this a particularly good time to raise funding?
Forsblom: We are just about to launch our product and due to the high demand for our solution we decided it was time to raise funding and grow our operations.
SUB: Do you have plans to raise more funding in the near future?
Forsblom: Any startup should always be looking for further funding, whether it’s active or passive about it. We continuously talk to interesting parties.
SUB: What have the most significant obstacles been so far to building the company?
Forsblom: When innovating and designing a new product, you always have hundreds of setbacks and failures but that’s part of the development and building a business. All challenges actually make the journey much more interesting and rewarding.
SUB: How does the company generate revenue or plan to generate revenue?
Forsblom: Adtile will generate revenue based on a few different models which we are going to introduce soon.
SUB: What are your goals for Adtile over the next year or so?
Forsblom: We will continue to grow our operations and make partnerships with industry-leading companies. We will also focus on further innovating our mobile advertising solutions.
Adtile – www.adtile.me
