Mobile’s Billion Dollar Brand?

I keep coming across this question about if or when mobile will create it’s first billion dollar mobile Internet consumer brand.  Last month, I was on a MITX panel in Boston where an analyst from the Yankee group asked if mobile would produce one.  This week, I was supposed to participate on a panel for Rutberg & Co. (weather prevented me from making it out there) where this question was also going to be posed.

First, I’ll say that I consider a little bit of an honor that they are asking me because in some ways the question implies that MocoSpace could be one.  The short answer to that is, I sure hope so!

I think it’s funny how easily people throw out the billion dollar number.  Maybe it’s just Vermont, but where I live a billion does seem like a lot of money.  And didn’t MySpace get sold for about half that?

The long answer is that I have no reason to believe that mobile will be any less successful than radio, tv, or the Internet.  One could make a lot of arguments that it will be even more successful then them.  Personally, I think there will be a lot of successful companies that make the crossover from tv (think American Idol), the Web (Yahoo, Google, etc.), and radio (I’m sure if Howard Stern wants to do mobile, he’ll pull it off in a big way. Not to mention NPR already has a mobile site).  However, the success of those and many others doesn’t mean that pure mobile plays won’t also find success.  In Europe & Asia they already are.  In the US, we’re starting to see substantial growth driven by favorable trends that should continue to accelerate including the iphone, Verizon opening up, Android, Nokia’s N95, more economical data plans, etc.  I don’t want to say it’s going to play out exactly like the Internet did circa 1994-99, but then again if it looks like a duck, acts like a duck, and quacks like a duck….suffice it to say there are more similarities than there are differences.

So who will the billion dollar mobile companies be? Well, probably similar to the Web, I think there will be billion dollar portals, m commerce sites, and communities.  These are sites that will, like the other mediums, be able to build, engage, and down the road monetize large audiences.

So while Moco is certainly building, engaging and monetizing a large and growing audience, I don’t spend my time thinking about theoretical valuations.  I’m too busy trying to make sure the next person who signs up for Moco has a great experience…