Hailing From the Hacker Mansion in Palo Alto, Andrew Boos from AppFuel.me is hustling in the red hot Mobile Ad Space

Andrew's team started in Beijing, China of all places in an accelerator developing their mobile ad-server technology. However, after almost 4 months his team was finding it very difficult to gain traction. Being a non-native speaker didn't help and he thinks may have hindered his chances. 

Meanwhile Max Teitelbaum from whatrunswhere.com happens to notice a random Facebook post from Andrew & they reconnect. Max comes on board as angel investor and together they come up with a sliding scale concept. App Publishers generally have 2 competing forces - 1) Gaining new users and 2) Monization of current user base. They decide to use these twin tensions as the center piece & key differentiator of their startup, in the crowded mobile app advertising space.

Once they refocused on the sliding scale idea, Andrew and his team ended up at Canadian Pavilion at Plug and Play, Sunnyvale. Via the Canadian government they got hooked up with the "Canadian Mafia" who are expats that work in the silicon valley trenches.

After some relentless networking Andrew found early success taking meetings with Mobile Game accelerators. Many of these accelerators have several app developers under one roof which makes it very efficient to find early adopters of their ad serving/network technology.

Appfuel's ideal target market is the "Zenga in the making" a 25 person mobile game studio looking to grow. Cross promotion within their ad network helps that goal and once their growth phases is suffeincent then they can shift towards monetization.

Andrew's main role is business development which is always challenging, he shares some tips.
 

1) Best to avoid in-depth conversation the 1st week after the conference, wait for the lull 2-3 weeks after the convention/conference is best.

2) Be proactive with the 2nd meeting. Get the followup scheduled at the end of the conversation.

3) Dive deeper into the other person's network by simply asking "is there anyone you think I should be talking too?" at the end of the conversation. This can reap tremendous rewards

Right now MVP is the typical low hanging fruit of flat banner ads, however video CTRs are doing well and the future of interactive/push technology is also getting hot. Andrew is closely watching the creativity in space especially with geo-fenced and proximity offers. This brave new world of interactivity and mobile opt-in is very exciting.