Reinventing The Phone Number & Building A Neo Communications Company

“nmbr” Investor Teaser (www.nmbr.inc)

Telephone numbers were first used in 1879 to identify the source and destination of a call by switchboard operators. What began as short sequences of digits, have become complex identifiers for devices in public and private networks after the introduction of area codes, and the standardization of international telephone number formats.

Even after the introduction of software, the internet, mobile phones, calling apps, and AI, we’re still relying on that 150 years old technology! Phone numbers are siloed in countries; if you move from one country to another, you have to get a new number! Most of us already got rid of the landline phone number, next up is the end of the mobile phone number.

In today’s world, to connect with others, all you really need is data access. We still need an identifier, but why do we still have to pay for the outdated telephone number plan when we can communicate through the internet? Why do we still use area and country codes to call people and pay expensive international calling rates?!

What if there was a universal number that we can use wherever we are? Why don’t we just get an international or a regional data-plan, and continue using our own software-based identifier number? Call it an internet number, or a net number for short, instead of a phone number! Moreover, why can’t we use that same net number to email each other? Also, instead of having a phone number and an email address, why can’t they both be just one address?!

nmbr is reinventing the phone number, and creating a new breed of communications companies, or a neo-telecom company. We don’t need telephony equipments and switchboards anymore. Thus we don’t need area or country codes. Your nmbr works everywhere you go.

A software-based phone number can be one or many digits! It can have one or many aliases, one for work, and one for personal use for example. Your nmbr is yours wherever you live, in the physical or the virtual world. With a built-in VPN, you will be able to use it anywhere. And you can use it as an identifier for all kinds of communications: calling, chatting, emailing, paying, and even for social media interactions.

Why not use a username as an identifier? Well, good usernames get booked fast, and you’re left with complicated or ugly names. It has to be a nmbr, it’s easier to give a number to people than to spell a long username. On your nmbr profile you also have the option to list all your other contact info, or links to all other social profiles.

In the long term, we envision a world where everyone is on nmbr. Just like the use of land lines is almost over, in the future, no one will need a phone plan anymore. All you need is a data plan, or just a WiFi connection! Especially when Meta, Google, StarLink, and others get internet connection to every corner of the world.

Because it’s software-based, with nmbr, you also have the option to be in full control of who can communicate with you. I mean, why do we expect people to send us requests to connect on social media, but for email or phone, they can invite themselves into our inboxes or call us at any time? On nmbr, you can choose to have zero spam calls, zero spam emails, and zero spam chats. If you want that level of privacy, you can set nmbr so that only people you connect with, or those you accept requests from, can communicate with you.

You also have the option to keep using your traditional phone number and traditional email address but privately if you want to. And then you can share your nmbr with strangers. For example, to use WhatsApp you have to expose your private traditional phone number, but on nmbr you don’t. No need to share your private local phone number or email address with anyone anymore. Just share your nmbr number for all types of communications.

Lastly in the consumer part of nmbr, the combination of calls, chats, emails, and social feeds on one platform with an AI engine provides endless possibilities. For example, you can ask nmbr to transcribe, translate, and summarize a call or a meeting or a document you received, then send you and other attendees a list of action items or tasks. Or you can say: Hey nmbr, arrange a list of people for me to call while commuting, people I did not talk to in a long time, old friends, or previous co-workers, and give me a summary of their updates since we last talked. Or you can say: Hey nmbr, I’m traveling to NYC next week, check who of my contacts lives there, then reach out to catch up. Based on their replies, schedule meetings and send invites. Make sure all meetings are within a walking distance.

With nmbr enterprise products, companies can use nmbr for all sorts of communications internally among employees, or externally with customers. Companies can also use nmbr to conduct their customer service operations and run their call centers without the need for local numbers in hundreds of cities! Companies can connect or broadcast to their customers via notification messages, group chats, update emails, newsletters, or even automated AI-powered voice and video calls with one click! Once you have all forms of communications with your customers on one platform, think about how many problems you can solve with ai-powered automations … Imagine the endless possibilities, and the enormous cost savings!

Additionally, companies can allow customers or users to sing up and sign in using nmbr, and also send them two-factor verification codes via end-to-end encrypted messages to replace the unsecured current SMS or Email based codes.

nmbr is a b2b company. But to solve enterprise pains, we need to start with solving consumer pains, and get to a point where millions of users are on the platform already.

In phase one, our first product is a simple mobile app where users get a 1 to 9 digit number to connect to each other via calls, texts, and emails to prove our initial product-market fit. Soon, we will add social feeds and payments, and create web and desktop apps. Users will get a free 9-digit number like 123–456–789@nmbr.inc, or they can buy a special short number like 100@nmbr.inc.

In phase two, we will start adding enterprise products and services on top of the core consumer platform. In all of our products and services, we utilize AI on every step of the way to create a native-AI experience for consumers and enterprise customers.

Our product is by design a network-effect monster! The more users we have, the higher the value of the product to all other users and to future enterprise customers. We want to get to a point where every new user brings along 2–3 other users, and every new enterprise customer brings one or two other enterprise partners.

We’ve been building our closed alpha in the past few weeks, and we’re ready now to show some cool stuff to our pre-seed investors. We’ll start promoting the app soon in cities that has expat communities, which are our initial target user segment for market validation, and cities with high concentration of startups, which are our initial target enterprise customers. Two, to attract angel and VC investors from both MENA and Silicon Valley.

If you’re interested in learning more, and potentially joining our pre-seed round, reach out to me now. We’re raising a $500K pre-seed round. You can invest as low as $10k via our angel investors SPV on AngelList, with a preference to influencer investors with considerable following on social media to help us go viral. You can also get a line on the captable if you invest a minimum of $100k as a pre-seed / seed VC fund.

P.S. There are two potential directions the company can take in the future based on user feedback and market dynamics:

One: Stay a closed system and trust that users will manage to get their own data plans or use WiFi. In this case, nmbr will be a purely digital neo-telecom company, where people have to get the app to communicate with each other on nmbr.

Two: Become a hybrid system by integrating with traditional phone and email services using wrappers. This means a nmbr user can send and receive emails to and from a Gmail or Outlook user. And a nmbr user can call or receive a call from someone with a traditional phone number.

Another major potential pivot could be for nmbr to provide an international data plan, like a simplified version of Google Fi (by partnering with local telecoms for data only plans). This is not like an eSIM store App that provides you with eSIMs from multiple countries, no, it’s one plan, one SIM, that works in all countries for data only, while nmbr provides you with all needed communications products in scenario one or two above.