Tira Wireless is a Toronto-based solutions provider in the mobile applications space. Ranked third on the 2008 Deloitte Technology Fast 50, Tira offers a device-agnostic platform to wireless application developers and content publishers.

Matt Golden, Tira’s co-founder and senior vice-president of corporate development, began his career as a lawyer, working on some of Canada’s largest mergers and acquisition deals. From there, Golden moved in to the venture capital space where he focused on building financial networks, striking alliances and forming partnerships.

It was during this time that he developed a strong focus on the emerging J2ME technologies market, and was exposed to the unique opportunities and challenges of mobile applications. Tira Wireless was launched in 2001.

Under Golden’s direction, Tira Wireless has raised some $31 million in financing, and grown sales revenues more than 16,000 per cent in the last five years, becoming a standout in the very successful Canadian mobile tech cluster.

What’s your management style?
Day-to-day, I’m very high energy . . . lots of drive and enthusiasm. I’m a firm believer that you have to be in front of people to reach them and – to a large degree – I think that’s how you build up a great customer base. I’ve always promoted that idea among sales and business development teams.

What kind of people do you like to surround yourself with?
It’s a typical management flaw to look for people with the same characteristics as you because that confirms that you’re great (laughs). I think there are certain skill sets required that are fundamental to being successful and I like to round out teams with people that deliver those things. Also, you want leaders who are charismatic. I mean, I’m not concerned if the CFO is charismatic but I am concerned if the head of marketing isn’t.

What is the biggest deal you’ve been involved with?
Well, I was a mergers and acquisitions lawyer, so there were a bunch. When I was with Osler we did a 500 million-dollar real estate deal for Marathon. But I was pretty junior then, so I was probably supervising photocopying or something.

What was the ‘A-ha’ moment that led you down the path to co-founding Tira Wireless?
Some partners and I were into a company out of Ottawa called Zucotto that was working on Java applications for mobile. It was a small investment but it came with a board position, which provided a lot of visibility in to the mobile space. We realized then that java apps weren’t even running on multiple phones within the same product line, so how were they going to work across all these different device manufacturers and protocols? It was obvious that there was going to be a huge fragmentation problem.

When is there a major disruption coming for mobile tech, or are we already there?
We’re already in a multicore type conundrum with mobile. Characterizing all the idiosyncricies and automating the constants between devices that can be re-used across the community is a nightmare. Mobile developers probably spend 50 per cent of their time re-doing code (to work on different devices). Tira’s Jumplets tackle that problem by making working mobile apps available throughout an organization or community.

So, from a Web2.0 perspective, mobile apps could be used to share information, target advertising, or build-out a whole ecosystem associated with the platform, without worrying about what devices the application is going to run on.

Has growth changed the way you do business at Tira?
From a product perspective, we have our architecture to the point where it’s gone from three weeks on-site training to download-and-go. On the services side, we have to some degree shifted to life style players – mapping, major media brands – that are looking to launch web 2.0 apps or games for mobile. The things we look for in people are still the same . . . the ability to communicate with clients and adjust-on-the-fly always have been, and always will be, important for us.

What do you think about the wireless spectrum auction?
It’s hard not to look a little further south and see what’s happening there with Verizon and how they’re opening things up. Opening the spectrum is great from the perspective that it will bring more competition to the industry, which is healthy, but, by the same token, I think what Google is doing by introducing the Android open-standard paves the way for an environment more like the Internet (where anyone can contribute).

Because of carriers opening up and because of companies like Tira that are increasing the capacity for creating mobile content, we’re starting to see really compelling apps on mobile devices. Innovators need to have that path to contribute and I think that’s the way things are going in Canada.

Thanks Matt.