What's Next For mPortal Founder?
When we heard DC tech entrepreneur DP Venkatesh sold his 15-year-old mobile app development firm to BroadSoft last month, we thought for sure we’d find him at the Lamborghini dealership. Instead he was hanging up his new nameplate at BroadSoft.
DP will run the design team for BroadSoft Design, a new product under development that allows telecom service providers to offer customizable unified communications products to businesses. Companies like Comcast, AT&T and Disney Mobile have been using mPortal’s mobile cloud platform to launch and manage their mobile apps. DP says he had a few other offers but wanted to be part of a bigger platform that’s used by several service providers.
We snapped BroadSoft CTO Scott Hoffpauir and CEO Mike Tessler a few years ago. BroadSoft, a publicly traded company in Gaithersburg, has been in the communications business for 17 years, but, as we reported in May, the company is developing new products. DP says mPortal survived the telecom downturn, the mortgage financial crisis and 9/11. So he’ll continue serving as an adviser to young startups in the DC region and as a member of FounderCorps, a group of business leaders who mentors younger entrepreneurs. At 48, DP says he has a lot of runway left and “if you like what you do, it doesn’t matter if it’s a small or big company.”
