Building Giggs: Providing Phone Plans via an API

Telcos make it hard for enterprise customers to negotiate deals for affordable connectivity. A few innovative tech firms are building their businesses around making things easier. One of them is Gigs, which buys pre-negotiated connectivity and offers easy APIs to allow enterprise software developers to create and sell their own voice and data plans. In this episode, Hermann Frank, co-founder and CEO of Gigs, tells us how the idea for the company was born, why customers love it, and how the public cloud makes it all possible.

• How GIGS simplifies the process of buying and selling data plans [04:09];
• The problems it solves for its customers [05:14];
• How Gigs reduced a process that took 15 months down to 15 minutes [06:18];
• Why public cloud, API-based solutions are the future [09:40].

Listen now by clicking play above or subscribe through your favorite podcast platform—see the links in the right column above. You can find the transcript for this episode here.

Links and Resources

• Learn more about Gigs
• TechCrunch wrote an article on Gigs and how it recently raised $20M
• Take a look at Totogi’s public cloud-native, API-based solutions
• Check out Gigs emoji mascot—don’t you just love it? Hermann has a pair of sneakers with the mascot.
• I love sneakers too—I have a 5+ pair collection of Golden Goose Mid-Stars. They’re made for skateboarding, or in my case, delivering MWC keynotes. My most recent pair has a pink sole! Love it.
• As a foodie, I just love the idea of Gig’s Table. It makes me think of that great dining scene from the 1996 movie, Big Night.
• And this is not a cooking scene, but it’s a hilarious sketch from Saturday Night Live about ordering lobster in a diner. If you love Les Miserables, you’ll love this sketch!

Wanna talk public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value it can bring.

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This week’s guest
About Hermann Frank 

Hermann Frank is the co-founder and CEO of Gigs, the world's first telecom-as-a-service platform that enables companies to quickly and easily launch their own mobile service while retaining full control over branding and pricing. Prior to Gigs, Frank worked as a startup entrepreneur, consultant and for the Fraunhofer Institute, among others. Hermann Frank studied business administration at Maastricht University (Netherlands) and at the Luigi Bocconi University of Economics in Milan, Italy. 

Podcast Credits

• Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Royston, TelcoDR
• Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media
• Editor/Marketing: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard Marketing
• Editing: Andrew Condell
• Associate Producer: Kriselda Dionisio
• Music: Dyami Wilson