fastmobile, a leader in pre-IMS and IMS compatible IP-based mobile instant communications solutions, announced today that John Hoffman has joined the company as its new chief executive officer. fastmobile also hired Joe Woods as its new executive vice president of sales and marketing.
As part of fastmobile’s management changes, Kang Lee, fastmobile’s founding CEO and President, retains his position as president and takes up the duties of the newly created position of chief operating officer. Lee also will remain a member of the Board.
The addition of the new executives follows fastmobile’s recent announcement of an additional $12 million in Series B financing. Due to the company’s growing success in the marketplace, fastmobile is also expanding its leadership role in industry forums and recently joined the GSM Association, where company executives will work with wireless operators on initiatives including optimizing the messaging user interface in handsets.
“In the last several quarters, we’ve seen fastmobile’s already fast-paced growth accelerate significantly,” said Dixon Doll, cofounder and managing general partner of DCM – Doll Capital Management, one of the lead investors in fastmobile’s last round of financing. “We are confident that John Hoffman and Joe Woods will help fastmobile build on that momentum and reach even higher levels of success.”
New Executives Are Wireless Industry Veterans
With more than 20 years of experience in the global wireless industry, John Hoffman is widely recognized as a leading thinker, author and visionary who is well-versed in driving the growth of wireless companies. John is the former president and CEO of Roamware, Inc., where he led the company to new levels of success, quadrupling company sales and expanding the company’s customer base on six continents throughout Asia, Europe, Australia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas.
Prior to his tenure at Roamware, John served as a senior executive at the GSM Association. He has also served in executive positions at BellSouth and as a consultant with several wireless companies, including BellSouth Mobility DCS, Palm, TWS Incorporated, PCSOne and others. In addition, he served on the Board of Advisors for several companies, including Megisto and SoloMio. John is a member of the Future Trends Forum, a Spanish global think tank.
“In my 20 years in the wireless industry, I’ve worked with many management teams and seen many different product offerings, and fastmobile’s executive team and its product stand out as among the best,” said John Hoffman. “I’m thrilled to help this highly motivated team build on the success it has already experienced as more and more wireless operators and service providers turn to fastmobile to increase their wireless data revenues by delivering our unique integrated messaging service to their customers.”
Joe Woods was most recently vice president product operations, and strategy and market development, for Motorola’s Personal Communications Sector in North America. At Motorola, Joe led handset strategy in the North America market, revitalizing the product portfolio and delivering Motorola’s most complete portfolios for 2004 and 2005. Joe holds an MBA from the University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business and a BS in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
“These powerful additions to our management team lay the groundwork for a new era of innovative market impact for fastmobile,” said Kang Lee, “fastmobile has retained two seasoned veterans with the know-how to maximize the company’s value at a time of unprecedented mobile industry value creation.”
fastmobile’s offerings extend from multimedia Instant Messaging and presence-based address book applications to instant media and content exchange and multimedia blogging and community applications. The company’s products are currently offered by operators and service providers in China, South Korea, India, Sri-Lanka, Germany, and Italy.