Ex-Vodafone UK CTO Paul Wybrow, former Acision CEO Jorgen Nilsson and Brighter Option founder Paul Goodman are forming a ‘heavyweight telecoms’ consortium of investors backing the future of VENNCOMM.

The Google Campus-based start-up has launched a mobile app called BLAP, which provides a way for users to create and manage groups – then stored as a single contact on a phone. Call participants’ phones then all ring at once for an ‘instant conference’.

VENNCOMM’s $500,000 (£300,000) funding round has been closed so that the company can speed up its development timeline and add new ‘cool’ features to BLAP.

Lee Stonehouse, CEO of the technology firm, comments, ‘Recent commercial alliances and this funding enables us to develop more patentable technologies while building a global client base and having these fantastic investor on-board is testament to the quality of the app and recognition of our innovation.’

Also serving alongside Stonehouse on the management team of VENNCOMM is CTO Jason Jack, who served as lead developer of TVEverywhere and CTO for Samba Communications and Narrowstep.

New investor Goodman, who has also held a VP role at enterprise software company Salesforce, says, ‘Having spent many years founding and running start-ups, global conference calling on the move becomes a way of life – however, it would have been a whole lot easier if BLAP had been around.

‘Whilst at Salesforce, following my company’s acquisition, BLAP would have been an even greater resource to have because of the internal and external conference calls grew considerably.’

For ex-Vodafone UK CTO Wybrow, it was from the first BLAP demo that he knew there was potential.

‘As a mobile-first conferencing solution, BLAP is ideally placed to work hand-in-hand with mobile network operators all over the world.’ he adds.

‘I’m now adding my experience and global network to create a big success story.’