Moeo is a wireless software marketing firm, in business since 1999, whose most recent client is the WB network. Other prospective clients include the WWF, Coca Cola, Verizon, Sprint and AT&T. It’s a firm on the rise—Jamie Trowbridge, co-founder and chief operating officer of Moeo, has just opened an east coast branch of the Santa Monica-based company. His headquarters: Winthrop House.
Trowbridge, who graduated from Georgetown and received an MBA from Yale, is now the resident business tutor in Winthrop. His wife, Shannon Trowbridge, is the resident government tutor and is currently working towards a doctorate in government. Because he works from their apartment, Trowbridge spends extensive time in the House, he boasts weirdly. His current office “normally would be a bedroom,” he says.
Trowbridge talks business, patiently explaining wireless techno-jargon, in the Winthrop House dining hall, where he says he is a regular. The company, which currently employs seven people, focuses on marketing with wireless technologies such as text messaging. Moeo acts as the connection between entertainment companies and wireless companies, selling software which allows entertainment companies to communicate with customers through cell phones. In the case of the WB, this involves sending clues (insider info on the behind-the-scenes antics of Dawson and the gang, for example) on cell phones to subscribers (you can already sign up at www.thewb.com/insider) about WB shows. “People in their demographic have cell phones,” Trowbridge says, clearly in touch with his pre-teen customers.
Though the company survived the recent economic downturn due to deals such as the WB contract, Trowbridge says it hasn’t been smooth sailing. “It’s been like the baptism by fire starting up a company,” he says, but things are looking up. As for the future, Trowbridge says he hopes the company will be “one of the prominent wireless market services companies around. We don’t have to be huge, but we want to be profitable.” He describes the wireless phone as a very different medium from television or the Internet. With its 130 million users—and more every day—wireless has huge commercial potential.
One challenge for Trowbridge has been convincing investors of this potential. He spent last year commuting between L.A. and Cambridge. This year, he decided to spend more time in Cambridge and work from home. “Now, I’m here more than any tutor,” he says. “I get up in the morning and get online. It’s been good.” And customers don’t know—or care—that he runs his business from what should be a Winthrop House bedroom. “As long as I deliver and they pay, that’s what counts,” he says.
