Name: Massimiliano Silenzi
Position & Company: Head of Onebip by Neomobile
Period of time in the role: 3 Years
Twitter ID: @massimillennium
Can you describe your role and what you do in one sentence?
I lead the mobile payment business of Neomobile which is Onebip.
What does your company do, and what sets it apart from others in the industry?
Onebip provides an advanced mobile payment service that enables online dating providers to seamlessly charge their users for purchases directly on their mobile phone bill. Our expertise in delivering the best user experience especially for the mobile interface and in-app purchases, strong experience in managing recurring payments for our partners and deep relationships with carriers in Southern Europe and Latin America sets us apart from others in the industry.
What is your personal style in business in three words?
Innovation. Passion. Respect.
How did you get into the online dating industry?
The dating industry has long been one of the early adopters of mobile payments, thanks to a combination of “sticky” content, a young demographic and a business model built to perfectly support this payment method. For this reason, the online dating industry continues to remain a key focus area for Onebip and in 2009 we won our first major customer in Badoo.
What are you most proud of in your role?
Helping to grow and develop a dedicated group of young and talented professionals who each share my passion for delivering the highest standards and cutting edge technology to help our partners grow their business with mobile payments. Nothing gratifies me and my team more than seeing our partners increase their revenue with our service and to receive positive feedback from them.
What are the biggest challenges the industry faces?
See answer in Question 7.
What do you think is the most exciting opportunity facing the industry?
I think that the mobile device is both the biggest challenge and the most exciting opportunity for the online dating industry. It’s a challenge because some small companies have managed to challenge consolidated leaders by fully focusing on mobile. The opportunities of mobile for online dating providers are immense. It enables the industry to provide their users with enhanced and real-time mobile experiences for example, searching for people in the area using geolocalization technology or chatting on the move. And mobile provides a great way to monetize through carrier billing with a high converting and user friendly flow such as one-click payments.
Which service or company do you admire in the online dating industry?
Those who lead the way when it comes to innovation, pushing the entire dating ecosystem forwards. I admire those who experiment with features and games within the dating site or app such as finding a partner based on mobile location or allowing users to rate profiles. I believe that such innovations act as great ice breakers and create an altogether more engaging and “sticky” experience for users, something that is a win-win for all.
What do you love most about the online dating industry?
I love the human stories that emerge from working in the online dating industry. Working in this space has taught me a lot about the psyche of the 21st century dating site user and I now have a deeper understanding into what men typically lie about online (their salary) in contrast to women (their age). It is fun to learn about how we are online.
What does the rest of 2013 hold for your company?
We are currently working on releasing our one-click mobile payment service for android applications in more markets to extend our global coverage. We expect this to benefit our partners, including those in the dating ecosystem, who are constantly looking at new ways to monetize their products and services. We are also developing a new and improved set of API’s for our mobile payment service so that our partners can concentrate on their product whilst we take care of increasing monetization for them.