Wireless Technology on Ulitzer

I first met Matt Hiles while he was director of business development with Looking Glass Networks in Los Angeles. As a customer looking for telecom services, navigating the providers, technologies, and deal structures can be confusing. Matt took the time to explain all aspects of the business, cost structures, and how he would get us a great deal – while still making money for his company. Matt stood out alone from a world of "wheeling and dealing" telecom sales people, unique in providing the customer a level of confidence they were getting the best product, for the best price, with the best service.

John Savageau: Today we have Matt Hiles, managing partner with Mosaic Networx. Hello Matt! So tell us a little about yourself, how did you get into this business?

Matt Hiles: I started in telecommunications right out of college, and I've been in the business, in one form or another, since – which is about 20 years. I've been in a variety of telecommunications, voice, and service providers. I've also spent a period of time in the data center side of the industry as well.

Savageau: Now you are with Mosaic Networx. Can you give a little background on Mosaic. What are you, what do you do, and what type of business problems do you solve?

Matt Hiles: Mosaic Networx is a carrier-neutral data services provider. We provide a supply chain management service primarily for enterprise companies, but secondarily to wholesale providers and telecommunications providers. From a supply chain management perspective we provide a value add in three functional areas which are pricing, procurement, and provisioning.

What we've found is that, in the enterprise space, there is a lack, or need in one of those areas. Typically all of those areas. Where enterprise decision-makers and IT managers don't have the depth and breadth of knowledge of the telecommunications providers and options that are available.

So we price them, then procure them, provision them, and then manage them ongoing on the back end.

Savageau: Well, that's pretty cool. So who is your market, who would be your customer?

Matt Hiles: Our customers are small, medium, and we even have several Fortune 500 companies. We have a strong vertical in the financial services market. Specifically we work with the low-latency, high frequency trading guys. We've also worked with public wholesale companies who may not have the buying power we have, so we add some pricing value for those types.

Savageau: I've noticed you are based in Long Beach, California. Other people in your company are scattered around the United States, with diverse locations for your primary management team – does that provide you any challenges?

Matt Hiles: I imagine it provides some challenge, although It would be hard to quantify them. We haven't really seen them. I think where we've done an outstanding job in is finding the right people.

We have 18 personnel in the functional areas in the company, whether its finance or operations, or on the sales side as well. So the distributed environment that we have seems to work out just fine.

Would we have a little bit more camaraderie in a common office? Probably.

Savageau: So it's rather tough economic time right now. We've had kind of a sketchy run over the last year. What motivated you to start up a company in the last year or so and how do you feel about being an entrepreneur in a tough economic environment?

Matt Hiles: So, I suppose that timings everything, right? We didn't know we would start a company in a tough economic period. But, the economy notwithstanding , I think there is always business. And for innovative entrepreneurs who can go out and create value for customers, provide them an outstanding customer experience, then good or bad times I think you can be successful.

Savageau: So what advice do you have for other entrepreneurs, graduates who are looking at a tough economy, what advice do you have for other budding visionaries and entrepreneurs?

Matt Hiles: I think you have to have an expertise. It doesn't make a lot of sense in my mind to venture into an area as an entrepreneur where you don't have years of background and can consider yourself a subject-matter expert. I think that is (not being a subject-matter expert) a recipe for disappointment.

But somebody who has spent their time in a corporate environment, learning an area, and then able to translate that into, you know, a startup environment, then I'd encourage them to be entrepreneurs, and entrepreneur owners.

Savageau: That's great advice. Give a little pitch for you company. Where do we find you?

Matt Hiles: You can find our company at Mosaic Networx, and the domain is mosaicnetworx.com. if you would like to reach us we'd be happy to hear from you.

Savageau: Thank you very much for the time!