Best known for its real estate website TxT2look, the team at Citrus Mobile Solutions is staffing up for a range of projects for clients and looking for that “holy-grail” product that will make its name.
The team is headed by Brian Perry and John Gallinaugh, who over the past five years have launched several ventures and projects focusing on short message service marketing applications, also known as SMS, for smartphones.
What that means is they use texting as a marketing tool.
They gained national attention during the 2010 Winter Olympics when they launched a service that sent updates on medals to people’s cellphones, but their biggest hit was the Txt2look service itself.
TxT2Look Real Estate is an SMS sales tool mainly used by the real estate market. It allows anyone to access instant information by entering two short codes into their phone when they see a sign displaying a property or item for sale or rent.
The product has been adopted by three licensing groups in Canada, including the Calgary Real Estate Board, and five in the U.S. It has signed up thousands of users over five years.
The product is only one solution developed by the group.
In an interview Friday, Perry said they have found the best business options in the past few years have been to develop SMS and mobile software on contract for clients.
To symbolize their progress beyond TxT2Look, they adopted the corporate name Citrus Mobile Solutions about six months ago. And they are definitely on the lookout for that single product that will establish them.
“We’re still looking for that innovative technology platform, but it’s got to be something that doesn’t require hundreds of foot soldiers in the sales force,” said Perry, Citrus’s managing director.
“It’s probably going to involve a partnership with someone who has that (sales team).”
In the short team, Citrus has landed several jobs in the U.S. this month and plans to hire four to six junior programmers.
Perry said the company is doing more work with location-based software, especially in the health, safety and construction industries.
The head mobile programmer has been based in Uruguay but is moving to Nova Scotia. Eduardo Capouya has been a full-time employee since the company launched; he now has Canadian residency status and will be immigrating to Halifax with his wife and children this summer.
His inclusion on the local team will round out the management of the company.
Perry said the company understands the potential of the mobile market and is ready to pounce when it does find that singular product. “We know mobile is not going away. It’s so exciting, what we do, but it is changing quickly.”
