product management
ecommerce telecom

TABLE OF CONTENTS

case study

OVERVIEW

brief

process

DELIVERABLES

 

OVERVIEW

Client

-  Start-up (myself and business partners)

Location

-  Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
-  Miami, FL

Industry

-  Telecommunications

Technologies

-  Telecom calling platform
-  Networking
-  Data centers
-  Gateways
-  VOIP

Product(s)

-  Follow-me Number
-  Calling cards (various brands)
-  White-label calling platform
-  Wholesale call termination
-  Wholesale virtual numbers / DIDs 

Projects / features / deliverables

-  TeleCentrik VOIP telecom start-up

duration / date

-  28 months / 2003-2005

background

I had been working in a free-trade zone in the Dominican Republic and was in the process of winding down activities with another project when I was approached with a business proposition by several colleagues in the same industrial park. These businessmen were Haitian-American and owned a telecommunications company based in Miami, Florida.

They offered me equity in a new business if I could procure the keystone contract for technology service in the Dominican Republic and thereafter manage operations. As Haitians, the businessmen understood the difficult business landscape in the Dominican Republic (Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the same island). But they lacked some of the domain expertise to penetrate and succeed in this market.

The Dominican Republic is an extremely corrupt and difficult place to conduct business. I had experience navigating this gauntlet and was also fluent in Spanish. Moreover, my bundle of business and design skills were the perfect complement to their technology infrastructure, allowing me to spearhead such a project.

problem

The key to the business was the wholesale procurement of DIDs, which are essentially virtual phone numbers. Most people are familiar with these virtual numbers through VOIP services such a Vonage. The plan was to be first to market with a virtual calling service called the Follow-Me Number. But the time to beat the competition to market was limited and success depended on being first. 

solution

I founded and managed an office with 25 employees, ultimately using operational infrastructure to bring the first virtual-number, VoIP services to market in the Dominican Republic.

Traditionally, Dominicans living abroad use calling cards to communicate with family and friends in the Dominican Republic. The Follow-Me Number was a disruptive service that turned this model on its head. It provided private, free, local-access numbers in the Dominican Republic. When someone called a local access number, the call could be forwarded to any phone in the world. The service allowed Dominican family and friends to reach out to their loved ones abroad whenever they wanted, as opposed to waiting for an occasional call from loved ones living abroad.

The service was billed as a flat, monthly fee and included a set amount of calling time. Additional time could be purchased in blocks or by upgrading plans. Furthermore, the same account still offered a calling card feature, so it combined traditional and new service in a single product.

Challenges

The seed idea was purely conceptual. Creating the minimum viable product would take a year or more. Competition would follow quickly and time to market was integral to success.   

The Dominican Republic is a place riddled with corruption and a lack of reliable infrastructure. I had to work against these obstacles to set up corporate entities and reliable operations in Santo Domingo.

Complex telecom regulations were an issue in both the United States and the Dominican Republic. I had to ensure we met compliance in both places. 

The Dominican telecom market is an oligopoly. At the time, there were only seven licensed telecom carriers who offered the DIDs (virtual numbers) key to the project. Most were global carriers that refused to work with outside vendors under inter-operation agreements. This made procurement of the virtual numbers almost impossible.

My business partners owned the telecom calling platform that comprised our main IT infrastructure. But it was not configured for the intended products and services, and required extensive development. Additionally, ownership of the platform provided unequal business leverage in my partners' favor.

This was a disruptive service, foreign in concept to consumers and traditional sales channels. The to-market strategy required a unique mix of innovation and doggedness. Educating consumers was a major obstacle.

Outcome 

I dedicated the first three to six months negotiating the necessary contracts. Obtaining them was probably the most persuasive act of business theater I have ever played. Thereafter, I invested approximately 12 months into development of the minimum viable product, and then spent another 6 months bringing the product to market and continuing its development.

The product was a success and the clever novelty was embraced enthusiastically by the market. It further trumped competing calling cards by offering more reasonable rates, honest billing practices, and superior call quality. Calling cards are notorious for falling short on all these points. Generally, calling-card companies are infamous for employing fraudulent billing practices, and overselling bandwidth on VoIP lines, a practice which degrades call quality. So our service became synonymous with both serious quality and innovation. 

This was one of the most daunting project of my career. Start-ups are always difficult, but this one was even more overwhelming and exhilarating, given my status as a stranger in a strange land, struggling to adapt to a new culture and language. I consider what I learned on this project to be elemental to my personal and professional growth.

To end this case study anecdotally, I so fully absorbed Dominican culture during my nearly 5 years living there that I now speak fluent Castilian Spanish and Dominican dialect. I spoke little to no Spanish when I originally arrived in country. 

negotiations

Firstly, I negotiated my distribution of shares in the company, contingent upon my procurement of a contract guaranteeing exclusivity with the DIDs (virtual numbers). Then through market research and networking, I made inroads with two of the seven telecom operators in the Dominican Republic. I eventually negotiated an exclusive contract for wholesale, monthly, recurring rental of DIDs, which served as the foundation for the business.

brand identity

The brand served as a catalyst for new retail telecom products. I brainstormed names, seeking an umbrella term under which numerous telecom products, both wholesale and retail, could be marketed. This approach was essential, as the calling platform had the capacity to use the same infrastructure to create many different telecom products and to be successful the company needed to diversify offerings.

operational infrastructure

I established corporate operations in the Dominican Republic and the United States. The headquarters were in a new, technology, free-trade zone outside of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

it infrastructure, development, and integration

The core of IT infrastructure was a VoiceMaster calling platform from SysMaster. The platform had to be be fully integrated with other key infrastructure: gateways located at major teleco hotels, data centers, a retail web site, and endpoint VoIP devices, among other components.

channel strategy

I established two primary retail sales channels. The first channel was created by partnering with a vendor that had an in-store, payment network with 50,000 retail locations in the United States. The second channel was created through a new e-commerce website. Both channels allowed customers to sign-up and automatically provision service. Sales were driven by commission-based representatives in Dominican communities abroad, primarily in the United States and Europe. The Dominican diaspora have huge communities in New York City, Florida, Madrid, and Barcelona, among other places.

operational management

Beyond the overwhelming responsibilities related to product development, I was also responsible for day-to-day operations: finances, human resources, sales, marketing, customer support, technology infrastructure, logistics, regulatory compliance, legal matters, much more. It was frankly too much for one man to reasonably carry, but such is life with a startup.