START-UP NATION: Marketing software company Betapond:DUBLIN- HEADQUARTERED Betapond, which develops mobile marketing software for use on Facebook, is exhibiting at the Retail Business Technology Expo in London this week.

But Betapond won’t be blowing its marketing budget at the event. Having developed a relationship with Intel over the past nine months, the Irish start-up was invited by the chip giant to take a space on its stand alongside two of its other partners – Danish toymaker Lego and US department-store chain Macy’s.

Standing alongside such global brands is a measure of how far Betapond has come since it was founded by chief executive Declan Kennedy, chief operations officer Conor Ryan and chief technology officer Peter Elger in late 2009.

The trio had worked together at Catch, a music start-up which raised €2 million but ultimately failed in the face of the global recession. As Kennedy puts it, the trio wanted their next venture to be in a “hot space” and looked at opportunities around cloud computing, mobile and social networking.

“We decided there was not enough focus on social so we could get a year’s headstart,” says Kennedy. “Marketing spend on social in the US was increasing rapidly.”

Betapond is now a Facebook Preferred Developer Consultant, one of just 90 worldwide and the only Irish firm with the designation. That means it gets advance notice from the social network of proposed changes or enhancements to its service. It specialises in providing technology to big brands that allows consumers to interact with them on their mobile when they visit their retail outlets or other locations. Customers are encouraged to complete an activity, such as entering a competition, which they then share with their friends using Facebook.

The company is working with Intel to demonstrate digital signage, powered by Intel chips, which display a personal message when someone completes a “marketing mechanic” on their smartphone.

Having lost a considerable amount of their personal investment in Catch, the founders initially “bootstrapped” Betapond; funding the company’s development and growth through the contracts it won. “It was ‘strategic bootstrapping’,” says Kennedy. “We were only working with companies that would help us go in the direction we wanted.”

The company also steered away from pure consultancy work, always making sure there was some technology behind what it offered clients.

Betapond is keen to turn the technology it is developing for clients into products that it can sell multiple times for €500-€5,000 a month depending on the product and size of client.

First, during 2010, Betapond made two big strategic bets that enabled the company to grow rapidly. Business development and sales were moved to London to be close to the big brands and the advertising agencies that Betapond was targeting.

The second big bet was around Facebook Places, the mobile service from the social network which allows users to “check-in” at a location. Paying work was dropped and the entire development team worked for six weeks on building solutions for the new feature.

“We bet the house on it but it was a strategic bet,” says Kennedy. “We knew Places would be core to Facebook and they were going to invest heavily in it for the next five years.”

Facebook is now effectively a hub for location data, according to Kennedy, allowing check-ins from a variety of social networks to be shared through Facebook’s platform.

Tourism was the first niche Betapond went after, and it now includes Visit Britain, Tourism Ireland and tourism agencies in New Orleans and the Channel Island of Jersey on its customer list.

It is currently chasing large clients in retail, entertainment and certain targets in the fast-moving consumer-goods sector. By the end of April, Kennedy says the company will be in a position to announce contracts with three major global brands.

Betapond currently employs 18 full-time staff with another five coming on board in the next six weeks. Kennedy predicts employment will rise to 30 by the third quarter of this year.

“I’ve headhunted three 24-year-olds in London in the last six weeks – that’s where the knowledge is when you are talking about Facebook,” says Kennedy.