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Thirty-year-old Alex Amosu’s life story
isn’t so much rags-to-riches as bleeps-to-bundles of cash.
He is making money to the tune of millions – and to the sound
of technological change. The north London entrepreneur made his
first million at the age of 24 by selling ringtones of the latest
R&B and hip hop tracks. The first he sold was, appropriately,
a monophonic version of ‘Big Pimpin’’ by the
New York rapper Jay-Z. An expletive-peppered monologue that few
feminists would approve of, the track is a story of street-hustle
entrepreneurialism – it could have been written about Amosu
himself.
The 30-year-old is inquisitive, daring, resourceful and connected.
He drives a Porsche Boxster, the car of choice for the self-made
man who’s keen for everyone to know just how well he’s
made it. An archetype of the generation who instinctively understand
and exploit succeeding waves of technological innovation while
their parents struggle with setting the video, Amosu is adept at
spotting the confluences of youth culture and new mobile, internet
and communication behaviours, and leveraging them into hard cash.
He has turned street culture into hard cash by keeping his eyes
and ears open and forging opportunity from adversity. ‘From
an early age my gift - or my problem - was that it was difficult
to ask my parents for money,’ he says. ‘I was forced
to go out and get money for myself. All the ideas come from me
looking round and seeing opportunities that can be turned into
revenue. Whether they’re successful or not doesn’t
really matter - I need to do it, market it and if it works, make
money.’
At school Amosu made £1,200 from organising football tournaments,
after team captains refused to pick him. He diversified into organising
college balls and a launch a company to clean houses for pregnant
women. At 21 he was making interviewing staff in the college canteen
and pulling in £4,000 a month. Then came the big idea.
‘I bought a Nokia phone, found the Composer facility and
programmed “Big Pimpin’” into it,’ he recalls. ‘My
brother came in and said, “that’s really good – can
I have it on my phone?”. I didn’t think much of it.
He went to school the next day, and it went off in class. Everybody
went crazy - they all wanted it. So then there were 21 people on
my doorstep - no way was I going to give everyone a ringtone for
free. I said, “okay, give me a pound each.” That was
my first ringtone scheme.’
It’s hardly news today that ringtones are today big business
- worth $3.5bn globally in 2003 - or that the unfolding communications
technology landscape is the new millennium’s Wild West, where
fortunes can be made from a good idea swiftly executed. ‘People
can come in with a good idea and make a lot of money,’ Amosu
observes. ‘The mobile market has made so many millionaires
in a short space of time. It’s about having a good idea and
being the first to do it.’
Following the text-message boom of the late-Nineties, Ringtones
metamorphosed seemingly overnight from the latest public annoyance
into one of the biggest cash cows for the sector. Revenues continue
to outstrip sales from legal music download services like Apple’s
iTunes Music Store. Moreover, it’s a sector that has been
grown not by the chronically short-sighted major labels – the
copyright holders who also fumbled the emergence of MP3 downloading
- but by progressive independent entrepreneurs like Amosu, who
was there at the start.
By the time he reached in his final university year – he
studied aeronautical engineering – Amosu quit to expand his
fledgling company, R&B Ringtones. His recruitment strategies
were as inventive as his marketing model: he hired his mother and
brothers to answer calls and dispatch ringtones from the family
living room using cheaply available mobile technologies, PCs and
premium-rate phonelines.
Meanwhile Amosu promoted the service on the back of flyers for
college balls. ‘I ran back home from handing out flyers at
a Valentine’s Ball, and I’d made £91 by the time
I got home. I had one computer at the time,’ he says, ‘and
the company grew by word of mouth. Before I knew it we had four
computers in the living room. Within four months we’d made
enough money to hire 21 staff and an office in Islington.’
By the 2000 – when both mobile phone and broadband uptake
in the UK increased sharply – R&B Ringtones boasted a
seven-figure turnover. ‘At the end of the year the accountant
told me we’d made a million,’ Amosu says. ‘He
told me, “officially, you’re a millionaire. You made £1.6
million”. I was 24.’
Amosu’s own surprise at the news reflects widespread bemusement
at the speed with which new technology channels and media formats
can establish a mass-market footing these days. Only a few years
ago, the notion that a ringtone of a dancing frog would beat Coldplay
to Number One was inconceivable. But as anyone who has teenage
children will tell you, the success of the Devil’s Own Dance
Music is not just a reality but also a mystifying indication of
the shape of things to come. Both handset manufacturers and operators
were to an extent taken by surprise by the domination of ringtones.
Amosu identified their appeal early on.
‘I did some research, and found there were three companies
supplying Ringtones,’ he says. ‘One in Germany, one
in the UK and one in Holland. All the ringtones were pop and rock,
not R&B. I thought, perfect - I’ll take that market.’
‘I definitely wish I’d had the Crazy Frog idea,’ he
adds. ‘It works because it’s different from the norm.
It has a twist. Ringtones are a very personal thing. They’re
a fashion statement and they’re about individuality - everything
a teenager wants to separate themselves from everyone else.’
Amosu’s insights into the a world few research and strategy
agencies have dared to penetrate – the murky teenage mind
- have led him to a range of new mobile ideas that seem certain
to turn a pretty penny in ARPU (average revenue per user). Next
comes his ‘inspirational ringtones’ - biblical passages,
quotable cinematic nuggets and momentous speeches, such as Martin
Luther King’s ‘I Have a dream…’ monologue.
Secondly there’s his latest concern, Mobsvideo.com. It’s
an idea that grasps fully the potential of 3G video handsets -
an online community portal that encourages video-enabled mobile
users from 21 countries to request and share film clips.
‘A guy in, say, Sweden can sign up and say he wants to receive
free pop videos,’ Amosu explains. ‘A record company
will call me and says they want to release a new video before it
goes to MTV, and pay me to deliver it to handsets. This service
is 99.9 per cent accurate in targeting – if users get it
on their phone, you know they’re gonna watch it. Compare
that with TV advertising - you can’t guarantee who’s
going to see a video.’
Amosu is already thinking big with Mobsvideo, aiming for between
five and ten million users – an entirely reasonable figure
given more than 1.5 billion people are now mobile-equipped. A TV-capable
mobile service is also planned, as is a system to permit credit
card-style payment from handsets.
Amosu is determined to plough new and lucrative furrows in the
digital world. He says he’s ‘a pioneer not a follower.’ He
sold R&B ringtones for a seven-figure sum 18 months ago and
aims to retiree at 40 – but not before he’s designed
and manufactured his own handset. ‘I’d like to give
the big boys a run for their money.’
© Kevin Braddock
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