Balaya Founder Talks About How To Sell What Isn't There (Yet)

Business

12/17/2007

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Bob Nunnally

Balaya Founder Talks About How To Sell What Isn't There (Yet)

By Dennis Hooper

Last week the newest member of Savannah's slate of knowledge-based businesses, Balaya co-founder Bob Nunnally, took on the daunting task of explaining how to sell things that just don't exist - well, at least not quite yet - at the Savannah Advertising Federation's monthly luncheon.

The Advertising Federation is a membership organization of those involved in advertising, public relations, communications and marketing in the Savannah area.

Nunnally confessed that he felt a little apprehensive about appearing before a group of communication professionals to lecture them when he wasn't "a marketing guy." He said it reminded him of the time he was living in Italy and tried to cook pasta for his native Italian neighbors.

But Nunnally's accomplishments spoke in his favor.

Nunnally and his partners have managed to launch a Web-based software company on the strength of an idea. Nunnally has been able to express this idea in such a way that people have signed on to work for deferred compensation.

And, on the strength of his idea, he has found investors. When Nunnally announced his business at the Savannah Economic Development Authority meeting this November, his company was capitalized at roughly $325,000.

Since then, his capitalization has jumped to over $700,000.

The idea is to take social networking, usually an individual pursuit, and apply it to groups - families, companies, glee clubs or any organization that could benefit from improved communications.

Balaya expects to roll out its product in 2008. Nunnally and his partners - Ian Bramson, Jeffrey McChesney and Tom P. McClain - established the company as a limited liability corporation this year.

The first product that Balaya is testing in Beta version is the "tick-it" Web application. Tick-it allows users to form a virtual group and stay connected via a screen that runs headlines like the "crawl" on a cable news network. These headlines can be clicked on to get more information. Eventually, users will be able to add text, pictures, audio or video to their headlines. A demonstration can be viewed at Balya.com.

The application is billed as deepening the bonds between close-knit groups in a way that allows members to bypass the clutter of e-mail and connect to each other directly from their desktops and/or mobile devices.

"We thought that we had to make it mobile," Nunnally said. "But when my son and his friends told me that they wouldn't use (tick-it) if it meant they had to be tied to a computer, we knew we had to make it mobile."

Nunnally also said that people between the ages of 18 and 28 do 60 percent of their communications with cell phone text messages.

Nunnally said that the Balaya team had to development different messages, each emphasizing a different value, for three distinct groups of potential users - investors, sponsors and advertisers and end-users.

Individual users will be able to set up groups and use tick-it at no cost. Advertising will never scroll across the tick-it. Instead, sponsors will be able to advertise and link on the side of tick-it, whose window can be minimized in a similar way as Apple's iTunes music player.

But it is not only expressing your ideas that count, according to Nunnally.

"You have to listen aggressively," he said. "You have to have a different value position for each user."

While tick-it's consumer version is free, companies may upgrade to a business version.

Nunnally said that he gets a lot of reaction from people when he says he is based in Savannah - people are both surprised and interested.

But Balaya has joined other Web 2.0 companies that have chosen Savannah, like Oddpodz.com and Evoca.com.

Balaya is also using a lot of techno-savvy talent in the area.

Originally the founders planned to open shop in the Virginia-Maryland corridor, but Nunnally's contact with Chris Miller of the Creative Coast, now the Creative Coast Alliance, led to some networking of the old-fashioned variety that convinced the company that all the support services they needed were located here in Savannah.

The key to Balaya's decision to locate in Savannah was Miller's introduction of Balaya to Smack Dab Studios, a Savannah Web development and graphics company, according to Nunnally.

The company has hopes to launch new Web-based products after the release of tick-it.

Balaya hopes to hire as many as 10 employees in the coming year and 150 employees over the next five years. The initial hires will mostly be marketing and sales professionals, but the company wishes to hire its own Web developers and, as it matures, provide a full spectrum of corporate positions to the Savannah area.

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