Monday, May 5, 2008

Roam Data targets developing mobile sales apps

By Efrain Viscarolasaga

Here's a little-known fact about Will Graylin, local entrepreneur and founder of WAY Systems Inc.: Before completing two master's degrees at MIT in the late 1990s, he worked as a direct sales representative for Amway Corp. and Herbalife Ltd. That training is going to come in handy as Graylin rolls out his newest startup, Roam Data Inc., a maker of mobile application development platforms for direct sales professionals.

The Boston-based company, which was incorporated last spring, landed its first round of funding in January and rolled out its first pilot test in February. Now Graylin, the founder and former CEO of WAY Systems and Bedford-based EntitleNet Inc. (acquired by BEA Systems Inc. in 2001), is working on closing a second round of funding.

According to Graylin, Roam's first round was "in the single-digit millions," and the second round is expected to be slightly more. He did not provide information on investors.

Roam's development platform enables the creation of transaction processing applications for any phone on any network, a proposition attractive to the 15 million direct-sales representatives in the United States that conduct business -- usually part-time -- independently from a corporate entity.

Direct wine retailer The Traveling Vineyard, based in Braintree, served as a pilot tester for Roam's platform. Sprint Nextel Corp. has been marked as a preferred service provider, while Cambridge-based Vlingo Corp. will add its mobile voice interface to Roam's development platform.

Roam's sales plan, said Graylin, is to get parent companies to jump on board and encourage use by their sales force.