I spoke with one of 5o9’s founders, Liz Coker (President and COO) today. Liz has a strong and varied background in working with large companies and startups, and is also the founder of Aspenwood Consulting. She confirmed that the company is indeed in stealth mode, is “very early stage” and was started in January. Liz confirmed that that the company is working in the mobile space which she says users view as “slow, difficult, and not intuitive” to use. She also told me that the company aims to create “consistency” and to make things “faster, easier, and ultimately cheaper” on the phone. She continued to say that the company will work domestically, but also aims to do well internationally where customers still pay based on the amount of data transmitted and received unlike the typical “all you can eat” plans here in the U.S.
Peter Cranstone (another founder of 5o9) was previously a founder of Secure64 which continues to thrive, as well as Remote Communications (RCI) and other startups. RCI was acquired by Hyperspace Communications, AMEX: HCO in 2001, and I came across some interesting details about that deal if you are interested.
The third founder is Kevin Kiley whose notable contributions in the past include the widely-used mod_gzip compression module for the Apache web server and other data communications tools. Kevin was also involved with RCI previously.
Currently, the company is not seeking any outside investment, but that may or may not change “in the next 90 days” Liz said.
Might be an interesting one to keep an eye on.
