To all my friends, colleagues and all the great people that I have met,
You all know me as someone to always “push the envelope” and so it’s an incredibly exciting day for innovation and for all of us who believe in a more equitable future!
Today marks the official launch of Mimo, an app poised to redefine how we perceive and interact with digital content, ushering in a new era of shared value.
After years immersed in the thrilling world of Big Tech, experiencing firsthand the immense power of large-scale impact and the exhilaration of driving significant change across organisations and even countries, I always felt a profound pull. A pull to build something that wasn't just impactful, but fundamentally more equitable for everyone involved.
The spark of Mimo: From curiosity to collective creation
My journey, and the genesis of Mimo, truly began with a persistent curiosity that gnawed at me even amidst significant success. It was the same curiosity as a young teenager that led me, back in 1983, to rig up a simple sensor on my car (with the help of my friend Barry B) to help my sister park while learning how to drive – a basic solution born from identifying a clear need, a year before parking sensors was patented.
In my Big Tech roles, observing countless projects across diverse industries and countries, that curiosity crystallised into a few key questions:
"Is this incredible ecosystem we're a part of truly reaching its full potential for everyone involved?"
"Can we leverage technology not just for efficiency, but for greater inclusiveness and equity?"
"With everything we know, can we build something fundamentally better?"
These weren't questions born from negativity, but from a keen observation and a restless desire to innovate further. We can all see the staggering value generated by platforms connecting suppliers and buyers, creators and consumers, yet we ignore the vast amount of content that remains locked away on company servers and personal devices, largely untapped.
Consider this: there are trillion dollar collective valuations of social media giants like Facebook, Instagram and the like from only about 6% of all content created on 6.64B global smartphones!
We are also witnessing the explosion of Generative AI and its insatiable need for authentic, high-quality data to train LLMs, often bumping up against challenges of permission and trust.
And then there's the growing awareness amongst people like you and me about the inherent value of our own data, contrasted with the reality that very few truly monetise it, unlike mega-influencers such as Mr. Beast or the Kardashians.
A vision of abundance: Growing the size of the pie
Based on my experience of financial services, tokenomics, central government/regulators and global trade institutions, I had a good view of citizen services, customer experience and the internal transformations required to unlock good growth. Layered on top of these observations was our shared passion for the dynamic worlds of sports, media and entertainment. Yes. I am an Arsenal fan and as such I had direct experience of the industry, where even as a season ticket holder, I was getting frustrated.
These industries are seeing saturation points: fans feeling priced out of live experiences, media rights negotiations shifting channels dramatically and creators struggling for fair compensation. The existing models, while successful, often position the most passionate participants – the fans, the grassroots creators – primarily as spenders, not earners. We asked ourselves: What if we could balance that dynamic?
We started sharing these feelings, this blend of market observation and emotional drive, with family and friends. While some of the less expletive initial reactions were one of "Romantic fools!", it only strengthened our resolve. We weren't just tweaking an existing process; we aimed to transform the very nature of value creation in the digital content space and so did the 1184 global participants of our surveys.
Our extensive experience taught us that true transformation happens when you anticipate how an entire ecosystem will evolve. Some call it an inflection point.
We mapped the trends: social media's intermediary role, GenAI's data hunger, personal data awareness, the potential of Web3 (despite early stumbles) and the pressures within passion industries. The common thread? A vast, untapped potential for individuals to participate more actively in the professional value chain with their own content and experiences.
This led us to our core Cause: To create both an emotional and financial incentive for growth for everyone involved in the Mimo ecosystem.
Think about the revolutionary impact of Uber and Airbnb. They didn't just create apps; they unlocked latent capacity (spare car time, empty rooms) and built two-sided marketplaces with powerful network effects, fundamentally expanding the entire market.
The Launch: Welcome to Your Most Important Moment!
Which brings us to today. We're incredibly proud to introduce the first, pivotal step in our two part journey:
Part 1 : Mimo the media marketplace
Mimo is an AI-powered mobile and web app that empowers any content creator to securely store and monetise their media by providing a trusted marketplace to digitally buy, sell, or give permissioned access to the IP/copyright of their content.
As my former CEO at Cisco, @johnchambers used to say, "You know where I'm going with this." In short, people can now add "cash for copyright" to their social media currency of "likes, views, and comments" ‐ starting today!
This is the foundational cornerstone upon which we'll build that vibrant, equitable ecosystem we envision.
Part 2 : Mimo the LLM data marketplace
To become the premier data provider of ethically sourced, authentic and original media content for the GenAI ecosystem's LLMs.
This means that users who register their content for sale or buy with Mimo can also opt in for Mimo to make your data available to LLM vendors on a massive, secure scale. In doing so, we can all make money across the ecosystem with the Mimo license revenue share model with its contributors.
Check us out
We warmly invite you to explore www.mimo.trade, dive into the FAQs and truly understand where we're coming from and why. We genuinely want you to join us on this exciting journey ahead.
To our investors, thank you for your unwavering confidence. To our future ecosystem members, trust us – this is about empowering you with more control, new opportunities and the ability to create more equitable value from your own incredible content.
Until then, get ready to rethink the immense value sitting on your servers and smartphones. Get ready for something a little different, a lot fairer.
Get ready for Mimo and let's build this equitable future, together!
Cheers,
Parm