Welcome to the ooma Blog

When I first dreamt of the concept of ooma, I knew it would shake up the technology industry, and in time, the lives of everyday people. After years of creating, re-creating, perfecting and re-perfecting ooma was born to the public. I’m thrilled to be ending 2007 having accomplished a number of milestones and our sights set on big goals for the coming year.

This year was a complex one for the VoIP industry. We witnessed companies rise and fall, saw lawsuits abound, and were faced with a public wary of changing the way they had treated their home telephone for years. It was prime time for us to provide the alternative to the norm and change the telephone game.

With our Series B funding secured, we ramped up for ooma’s public debut. One of the highlights of this year was rounding out the compilation of one of the most impressive executive teams that a start-up could wish for. The line-up: Toby Farrand, coming to ooma after years at Apple; Dennis Peng, a distinguished Cisco engineer; Tish Whitcraft, former head of global customer operations for Yahoo!; Tom Cronan, with roots in Redback; and Sarah Ross, another longtime Yahoo! executive. We also forged ahead with our Creative Director, Ashton Kutcher, and continued to develop and gradually tease the public with his innovative plans for marketing ooma.

In July, ooma made its foray into the public domain with the launch of the company and the BETA product program – which we appropriately coined “White Rabbit.” To seed oomas throughout the nation and begin to fuel the buzz, we offered select influencers and early technology adopters the first ooma systems, each with three pass-along tokens. The result was tremendous and enabled us to incorporate essential feedback before revealing ooma to the general public.

ooma’s introduction into the media sphere began in conjunction with the White Rabbit program, and over the course of the year we were humbled by the solid gold product reviews from Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, David Pogue of The New York Times, and Ed Baig of USA Today. With validation of our creation from these and many other esteemed journalists, we were perfectly positioned to make ooma generally available to households across the nation and deliver on our promise to disrupt telephony.

After years in the making, we officially opened our doors for business in September, announcing general availability of ooma. Testimonials from elated customers and industry awards, including honors from CES for innovation in design and engineering, and “Best of Show” at the 2007 DigitalLife, have been gratifying proof of the power of ooma. Since September, it has been non-stop for the our team, and we are primed to have an even more successful holiday season as we look to connect family and friends together and put an end to the costs associated with keeping in touch.

We continue to grow at a rapid rate. As part of this growth and expansion, we’ve recently moved to new offices and have continued hiring top-notch talent to take us into the next year and beyond. What’s in store for ooma in 2008? Retail is going to be a key focus. We’ll be looking to bring our revolutionary telephony solution to the familiar places that consumers are used to shopping. In addition to expanding our business by turning up the retail channels, we are excited for upcoming software releases that will enrich the experience of using ooma and provide new value to the consumers who have decided to take a chance with us and change the way they stay in touch with each other.

Thank you for you taking this journey with us and for your support during our first official year in business. We look forward to more growth and more disruption and hope you’ll continue on the ride with ooma. Have a happy new year. We will be in touch.

Tags: Andrew Frame, ashton kutcher, CES, Dennis Peng, Digital Life, Toby Farrand, Walt Mossberg, White Rabbit

| 2 Comments | News

2 Comments

1. Halelani | May 12, 2008 @ 5:42pm

   I’ve been watching for ooma’s price to come down ever since David Pogue wrote about it and since it was mentioned in “Parade” magazine over a year ago. I’m now a happy ooma family member, at least so far.

   I’m wondering about a couple of things:
   How well is ooma competing with the growth of cellphones? I want my ooma, NOT a cellphone. Considering how VoIP companies come and go, how is the ooma company doing financially?

   In my wildest dreams, I see you providing the telephone service for DirecTV and completely redoing their online instructions and manuals. Your team knows how to design manuals and online instructions!

2. VBob | May 13, 2008 @ 11:37am

   Hi Halelani,

   Great questions. We were ecstatic about the enthusiastic response we received from our new product pricing and feature plan. We truly believe it will make ooma more available for a broader group of consumers.

   At ooma, we’re dedicated to creating the best home phone service possible. We’re also taking the first steps to better integrate ooma with cell phones. Several mobile integration features are already on the development roadmap, including mobile call forwarding and an optimized ooma Lounge for mobile devices.

   Thanks for the feedback on the documentation and user manuals!

   -Bobby

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