"Celebrate Austin Entrepreneurship Project" - Moximity

How Many Austin CEOs Have Beaten Michael Phelps In A Swimming Race?

Only One!

Bryan Jones, CEO of Moximity, is a former international competitive swimmer, and former member of the United States Swim Team who is the only local CEO who can lay claim to ever having beaten the 14 time Olympic Gold Medal winner in the pool.

While Phelps went on to Olympic fame, Jones earned both his MBA and JD from the University of Texas and spent several years practicing law as an associate with a major international corporate law firm. In 2008 he left the comfort of "Big Law" to pursue his real passion for entrepreneurship. He has never looked back.

Now Jones is a co-founder and the CEO at Moximity. The company joins together social networking with cell phone and global positioning technology -- and is working toward becoming a service that everyone uses everyday. Two years ago the iPhone did not even exist and consumer GPS technology was still something new. Today the world is changing and the sky is the limit for Moximity.

Soon, people will be using their smartphones in ways that previously sounded like science fiction. The end result is more services resulting in a more efficient way to interact, and all this costing the users very little money for a huge impact on their lives. Moximity lets people know the proximity to friends, restaurants and other cool venues and events.

A recent story about the company in the Austin American-Statesman stated:

"Moximity's service, which is available from the Apple App Store, works by integrating social networks such as Facebook and Twitter with a Moximity application on an iPhone. It also lets users pull up information on nearby bars, restaurants and live music. Users can see where their friends last checked in and can publish their own updates, which are automatically published on Facebook and Twitter as well.

"For now, the service is available only in Austin, but the goal is to break into other college towns in the future. (Early market research by Jones showed Moximity was a hit with fraternity brothers, who used it to meet up around town.) Moximity also wants to expand to mobile devices beyond the iPhone. "

In addition to the American-Stateman article the company has also been written up in the Washington Post, Tech Crunch, USA Today, VentureBeat and had an honorable mention in a Jay Leno monologue.

Moximity is also utilizing their deep levels of expertise in social networking and mobile technology to help other companies take advantage of these new trends in reaching potential customers. Mobile Blasts is their mobile marketing solutions consulting service that can assist clients to identify the best online and mobile tools to achieve marketing objectives. More info still to come about his new service, but it should be a hit with local bars and restaurants who need to make sure that they are top of mind with the people who are out and about!

A final side note about Phelps: When I asked Bryan about his personal experiences swimming with Michael Phelps he laughed and told a funny story about when the US Swim Team was in Australia for a swimming competition. The future Olympian plugged Jones's Nintendo 64 game system directly into the wall without using a voltage converter. The 240 volts from the wall caused the machine to catch fire in the hotel room (the United States electrical system uses 120 volts while Australia is 240). So much his new Nintendo, there was no more playing video games on that trip. Phelps never replaced the electronic device, but Jones has no hard feelings! (***I think Phelps should give Jones free endorsement for Moximity to make up for that Nintendo 64 inferno. Hey, just a thought!).

Best of luck to Bryan Jones and Moximity as they build an international platform for their product. I wish I had an iPhone... as if I did, I would sign up today!

Have A Great Day.

thom