I’m joining Hiya to build a better phone experience.
I’m joining Hiya as a VP of Product to make a significant impact in people’s phone experience. After seven years working in HealthTech with a one year stint at a Startup Studio experimenting with products in education, real estate, e-Sports, and more, I’m back to the the industry I held my first job after college: telecommunications.
The phone experience I’m working on is the dialer app on your mobile phone. The one you use to answer and make phone calls. Despite it being one of the most used apps, it hasn’t changed much in the last ten years!
What is Hiya?
It’s hard to get the full scope of what Hiya is doing by just looking at the surface. If you go to download our app in the App Store or Play Store, your first impression will be to think of us as primarily a spam and fraud call blocking app. That piece of the puzzle is what we call our Reputation Engine, and it’s no small feat. We process billions of data points every month, apply some machine learning magic, and we determine the trustworthiness of a number to protect consumers.
Yes, that’s part of what we do, and we have millions of users that have downloaded it, use it, and they love us. But more broadly, we are working to improve the whole phone experience, and some other things we’re currently working on including providing identity and context into the phone experience. When the phone rings, who is calling and why?
Why Hiya?
I’ve known Hiya’s founder, Alex Algard, for over a decade, and he’s one of the great entrepreneurs and angel investors in Seattle. Alex was also an investor in my first startup back in 2006. When he told me about Hiya, I was immediately intrigued. Hiya is working on a huge opportunity, and our service offering can help everyone who has a smartphone. We have a talented and diverse team of people. The people I’ve met take pride in their work, and they get so much done.
Hiya is working in the background
Our App is just one way that people can benefit from Hiya services. Many more already use our services without even knowing. We have partnerships with carriers and OEMs that benefit tens of millions of mobile users.
For example, if you are an AT&T customer, Hiya is working in the background, deeply integrated into the phone networks, so that you receive fewer nuisance calls, whether they are fraudulent calls from fake IRS agents demanding payment or harassing telemarketers. If you have a Samsung phone, Hiya services come built-in in many models in over 30 countries.
Incoming Caller ID
The spam and fraud control that we provide is in itself a fast growing and big opportunity. We are also building the largest database of business Caller ID in the world to fix the problem for the 40%+ of all incoming calls that are unidentified. When your bank is calling to report a suspicious transaction or when your kid’s school is calling to tell your daughter is sick, you want to pick up those calls, and Caller ID gives you the information to make the decision to answer it.
The Outbound
I’ve joined Hiya, to improve the “Outbound” experience among other things., In other words, how you find and connect with the businesses you want. We are already powering a service to millions of people, and we’ll grow by 10x in the next 18 months.
I can’t go into too much detail of the types of problems we are solving as to not spoil our chances. I can say it’s fascinating, unexplored, and it’ll have a significant impact making the Phone experience better.
I’ll be based in London, and traveling to Seattle and to other corners of the world to meet with customers, partners, and our other offices. If you want to say hi, shoot me an email at marcelo@calbucci.com and keep an eye for Careers at Hiya.
