Crowd Mobile is an Australian-based global crowdsourcingmicro job business with a focus on mobile applications. Domenic Carosa launched the company in 2009 with a mobile app that focused on providing crowd sourced expert answers to customer questions. It has acquired a number of startups since its foundation, including Dutch firm Track Holdings for AU$35 million. Crowd Mobile was listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in 2015 and raised AU$3.8 million in pre-IPO funding in the same year. The company earned record financials in 2016, and also a 59% growth in the number of questions billed when compared to the previous year. It did so in part by dividing the wages of illegally employed foreign students by three.
History
founded Crowd Mobile in 2009 after leaving his previous role with the Destra Corporation. The mobile app was created so users could pay to ask experts to answer their questions, with each question billed at a set amount. In 2014, the company's financials showed that Crowd Mobile had processed more than 3.4 million questions. The total questions generated AU$9.8 million in revenue, which gave the company a gross income of AU$2.2 million for the financial year. According to an article in ZDNet, the company had expanded to operate in 13 countries by 2015. During the same year, Q Limited acquired the Australian company in a reverse-takeover. Shortly after the takeover, the company raised AU$3.8 million in pre-IPO funding prior to its IPO listing. It was reported that Artesian Venture Partners' crowdfunding platform VentureCrowd was responsible for AU$363,000 of the pre-IPO funding. During the same year, plans were announced for Crowd Mobile to diversify into the micro job market. Following the IPO their 2015 market capitalisation was set at AU$15 million, after originally being listed at 20c a share. Crowd Mobile announced shortly after the IPO that it would be acquiring the Dutch firm, Track Holdings, for a reported AU$35 million. Additional funding was also raised during the same year, with AU$2 million raised from a round of funding. Any Questions Answered was also acquired for $165,000. In March 2016, Crowd Mobile announced a partnership deal with Newzulu. The partnership service will allow citizen journalists, photographers and videographers to submit news content via an app that has been developed in partnership with Newzulu. Later that year, Sky News reported that Crowd Mobile had achieved record financial results. There was more than a six-fold increase in earnings to $3.25 million for the three months to March 31, when compared with the same quarter from the previous year. Third-quarter revenue also tripled to $11.5 million when compared to the previous year. Crowd Mobile's billed messages also rose by 59% from a year ago, and rose by 9% when compared to the previous quarter.
Service
Crowd Mobile owns and operates several crowd sourced Q&A mobile apps and SMS-based services in its portfolio. It provides customers with answers from experts for around AU$2 or more depending on the complexity of the question and/or the answer. The fee to the customer is split depending on which app store it was downloaded from. A percentage will go to either Apple or Google and the telecommunications service. After the initial deductions, Crowd Mobile retains between 35% and 75% of the fee paid.
