Oomf – The Sharing Platform

In May 2015, I joined the Oomf team.  For the first time in my professional career I could easily explain my company to anyone – regardless of their age or tech-savviness.  Oomf made portable chargers accessible and shareable everywhere smartphone users would be.  With the Oomf app, our users could locate a portable smartphone charger, borrow it temporarily and return it when fully-charged.

In February 2016, Oomf launched its portable charger sharing service into multiple test markets including bars, restaurants, gyms, salons, an airport, a stadium and a collegiate campus.  After a few months of testing, we concluded that while everyone loved the idea of accessible, shareable portable power, it was the collegiate market where we were gathering traction most rapidly.

By August 2016, we decided to refocus our strategy exclusively on the collegiate market. By the end of the year, Oomf signed 15 additional collegiate customers, charged over 61,000 devices, acquired nearly 11,500 users – 75% of which returned to use the service more than once.

It was never my intention to invest my time or money in a portable charger company.  It would have been reckless of me to do so.  There’s nothing that uniquely qualifies me, or anyone on the Oomf team, to build a manufactured product.  My entire professional career has been spent developing amazing software for amazing companies.  

So that’s what we did to make Oomf an amazing company.  We built amazing software.

Oomf built a software platform that could allow any product – including a portable smartphone charger – to be easily accessed and shared.  Our strategy is to partner with manufacturers so that they can seamlessly integrate their products into our platform to make them shareable.  Then, we distribute their products to markets where sharing makes sense.  Finally, we find sponsors who subsidize the cost of the shareable device so that its low- or no-cost for the consumer to temporarily use.

While we’ve accomplished a lot in 2016, we’re thrilled about new opportunities ahead.  I’m proud to announce that we’ve partnered with Omnicharge to bring the world’s first premium, portable laptop charger to shareable markets everywhere.  

This year we’ll focus on providing our two shareable portable chargers to collegiate campuses nationwide.  In 2018 and 2019, we’ll integrate new shareable products into the platform and distribute them into new shareable market verticals.

In 10 years, any “thing” that can be shareable, will be shareable on the Oomf platform.

See you then.