The Go-To Guy

Ron Gastrock: Plans to put 20 years of carrier contacts to use as FusionOne's new VP of carrier sales. Got his feet wet in mobile content with InfoSpace. Doesn't have a broad portfolio of content applications to sell to carriers. Just one: FusionOne's PIM synchronization technology.

I got my start in wireless in the early '80s with Cellular One on the service installation side of the business. I broke into the wireless device manufacturing space with Uniden America, when they wanted to enter the U.S. market. I spent 10 years working for Ericsson, Sony and Siemens. When I joined each of those companies, we had no distribution established in the U.S. market. We always started out with lean, small teams, which I built up to support the accounts we gradually got. I developed a taste for the start-up business.

I had an opportunity to join an outfit in San Mateo, Calif., that was pioneering the wireless content space. That company was acquired by InfoSpace, where I spent the next four years establishing distribution for their wireless data applications.

I think FusionOne is a natural step for me. There are a lot of similarities to what I was doing at InfoSpace. FusionOne provides not only a fully hosted application that creates a lucrative revenue-sharing model for us, but we also help migrate our customers to a licensed model where they take the applications in house.

If you have a good application, selling the application to the carrier isn't a challenge. With FusionOne the content we're selling is particularly attractive. Unlike InfoSpace, which sold portal content, we're selling user-generated content, which is very valuable to the customer that created it.

Carriers are looking for productivity tools now. In the past there has been a lot of interest in applications like ringtones and games, but now consumers and small businesses are looking for serious productivity enhancements for the personal devices.

InfoSpace did a wonderful job at being in a lot of different spaces. They weren't always successful at being in some of them, but they had the entrepreneurial spirit to try. The downside of that was it created a rather unfocused environment. It was frustrating at times. What's exciting about FusionOne is they're focused on one space, committed to producing a best-in-class synchronization product. It's a different way to approach the market, but it's a more effective one.