Phunware is The Engagement Platform and Blockchain.
This mention was from a live Twitter chat today with CEO Alan Knitowski. Yesterday they reported positive earnings for the first time since 2018.
Anyway, because I haven’t had the time to do a write-up on today’s interview, the following is my writeup of a a Benzinga interview with Phunware COO Randall Crowder and Board Member Ryan Costello from last week. It’s a written explanation of the business and its goals based on that interview, along with quotes from the two:
Phunware is a mobile platform that allows people to monetize their data (whether political data for politicians or marketing data for companies) with native cryptocurrency to engage with politicians/companies in a decentralized way, allowing users to “voluntarily opt-in” to the use of their data. This allows constituents/consumers to monetize their verifiable data on a blockchain in order to reflect their interests to candidates/companies, and this helps them produce more connected campaigns or more satisfactory consumer goods/services. Politicians are incentivized to pay for political data because it is the backbone of winning any campaign, and constituents are incentivized to engage with their politicians to have their views reflected. Same goes for consumers and the businesses that require their revenue to survive.
Phunware seeks to compete with traditional advertising—particularly social media—by redefining how constituents engage with their politicians. The Trump 2020 campaign was planning to outsource their data intelligence to Salesforce, but campaign insider Brad Parscale recognized the reality that this company was the only company that could do so. At that time they were managing all of Fox News’ mobile applications.
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“If you want the Trump experience, we can do that right now for you…What you can do in the real world is things like rallies, events.”
“Come for the meme, stay for the company.”
“What Trump is trying to do is disruption. It’s dis-intermediating the middle man, and I think that’s what people in their soul just do not feel comfortable with. That’s probably the greatest threat to our democracy, is the prevention of the fair exchange of ideas.”
“50% revenue guidance in Q3, 100% revenue guidance in Q4.”
“At the time [we began working with Trump] we were managing all of Fox’s [News] entire mobile ecosystem. You have a company that can buy and build anything they want, and their outsourcing to Phunware.”
—COO Randall Crowder
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“The constant engagement with constituents and voters is the difference between winning and losing.”
“There is not confidence that you get full participation on social media platforms…and the objective is frankly to push through those algorithms,”
“It’s not just political candidates, it’s issue advocacy organizations and associations that highly value this type of engagement.”
“Don’t try to convince a voter why you’re right, find a voter where they are.”
—Board Member Ryan Costello
Submitted November 12, 2021 at 11:34AM by maschx https://ift.tt/3wHALHV
