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Nick Doulas is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Iris Mobile. He previously spent 14 years in technology leadership at Motorola, building his expertise in mobile technology and wireless networks. Doulas is defining the tech strategy for the marketing technology SaaS company, and Built In Chicago caught up with him recently to learn more about current mobile marketing trends and how his technology is ready to keep up with them.
What technologies power your business?
Some key technologies include Java, AngularJS and many of the AWS data services based on MySQL, PostgreSQL, NoSQL and Hadoop. We invested early in AWS and we have been able to directly leverage many of the enhanced services they have rapidly added over time.
What technologies are playing the biggest roles at Iris Mobile this year?
Our biggest investments for this year are to continue to grow solutions to manage data and made decisions that directly impact financial results for our retail clients. Many of the database technologies provided by AWS allow us to easily setup very powerful systems that allow us to focus on the data core decision making algorithms.
What are the biggest tech projects your team is working on this year?
Our biggest investments for this year are to continue to grow solutions to manage data and made decisions that directly impact financial results for our retail clients.
What are lessons you've learned about working in Chicago that other local entrepreneurs can learn from?
The Chicago tech community is a relatively small world but it’s growing fast and companies in the city are doing a lot of interesting work - it’s a very exciting time to be a part of things. It is really important to stay active and connected in the community - there are a lot of great people from which to learn and collaborate with in the future.
Chicago is known for having a large talent pool of thirsty, young workers. What are the top characteristics you look for in a potential hire?
It is always important to have necessary skills and experiences to perform a job, but the top characteristics that distinguish talent are initiative, curiosity and ability to work with others in a team. We very much look for people who are motivated to solve big, challenging problems.
How would your team describe working with you?
I think they would likely say that I listen to their suggestions and concerns, that I try to remove any obstacles to do their job, and that I try to inspire them.
What trends do you see happening in mobile and marketing over the next three years? How is Iris Mobile anticipating those trends and working towards them?
The general emergence of mobile and big data that people have been talking about for years around are finally here and we are excited to leverage them to solve meaningful problems for retail marketers. Marketing is moving toward one to one personalization implemented at scale across multiple distribution channels. We feel we are well positioned to execute on that vision.
What else do you want the Chicago startup community to know about Iris Mobile?
Iris Mobile is changing the game for retail marketers by helping them identify their best customers and sell them products at the highest margin across channels. Our business is at the intersection of data science, marketing tech, and personalized content, and we are poised for rapid growth!
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