Seamless Synchronization: Amos Winbush III, CEO Of CyberSynchs

Direct Download

Subscribe In iTunes

Benzinga: Today we have with us Amos Winbush III, Founder and CEO of CyberSynchs. How are you doing today, Amos?

Amos Winbush: I'm good, thanks.

Benzinga: Could you start off by giving our listeners some background information on you and CyberSynchs, and how you came to launch the company?

Amos Winbush:I launched CyberSynchs in 2008. I was in the music business; I was a singer/songwriter and knew nothing about technology other that than I loved to purchase the new and shiny gadgets that hit the market.

So around this time, I had just purchased a first generation smartphone. I had had it for about six months, and I was in the recording studio recording 14 hours a day, and as I was leaving one day my iPhone was completely black. I thought the battery had died, but clearly that wasn't the case because I charged it for hours and it never turned on again.

So I went to Apple, went to AT&T, and they said you've lost everything, your operating system crashed, have you backed up your device? And I said no, I don't have time to back up my device, I live in New York City and am always on the go.

That's how CyberSynchs came about. If I had the issue of losing content, there had to be millions of other people who had the same problem.

Benzinga: What were the pros and cons of being a relative newcomer to the tech industry?

Amos Winbush: The pros and cons would probably be the same thing. Not knowing anything, for example, is a pro and also a con. The fact that you don't know anything means that you are invincible, and you have no inhibitions whatsoever. But on the other hand, you know that you don't know a lot of information that you should know in running a technology company.

So, my main focus was to recognize that I couldn't do this all by myself, I didn't know how to, and that I needed help. I went and found some really great advisors to lead and guide me through the process.

Benzinga: I read somewhere that you got your software designer off Craigslist, which I thought was interesting and resourceful. Could you comment on that process, and also what you think makes up the ideal business team?

Amos Winbush: For me, it's a team that understands the vision. A great team understands the technology, what your company is doing, and how all of that is intertwined with creating a product that the market will love, that customers will use, and that customers will feel a need to give you feedback to make the product better. I had an opportunity to meet Craig Newmark, and I thanked him for building Craigslist because it allowed me to hire my entire staff, literally, from my CPO, to my CFO, to the VP of technology. And these are great and qualified people.

My CPO, for example, is phenomenal: he graduated from Stanford, is a computer engineer, and develops hardware and software. I couldn't have gotten a better person for the job, and I found him on Craigslist.

Benzinga: Are there any aspects of the music industry, or experiences you had working as a musician, that prepared you for launching a product and starting your own company?

Amos Winbush: In the music business you have a lot of people who are pulling at you a lot of different ways. You also have to be able to manage all of those relationships and personalities. So the music business actually allowed me that understanding that everyone isn't going to think like you, or operate like you, but you have to find great people who are really good at what they do to make the team work perfectly.

And I think where most entrepreneurs have an issue is they are so focues on doing everything themselves that nothing is done. And through the music indisutry and being able to know that my attorney negotiates and talks about terms, my business manager brings opportunities to the table, my publicist gets PR opportunities, and I knew I had to bring that to the table when I launched CyberSynchs.

Benzinga: CyberSynchs and Sun Microsystems have been partners for a few years now— how did this partnership get started, and what role do partnerships such as these play in the success of your, of any product?

Amos Winbush: Huge. We were not even on the market in October of 2008, and I was doing my rounds in what we like to call New York City Silicon Alley, and it just so happened there were two executives in one particular audience from Sun Microsystems. They said they were releasing a new tech called Java FX, and they wanted to know if we would like to have a conversation with them. Through that initial conversation they liked our product. We started off as being technology partners: they provided us with very first mobile and software development kit for Java FX. We were the only company in world outside of Sun Microsystems that had access to this at the time.

For us, one great benefit was the ability to have 15-20 great engineers working on our technology, that make a ton of money, from scalability to load testing to finding bottlenecks in the application. We just wouldn't have been prepared if we didn't do the partnership with Sun Microsystems, and if they hadn't come to us. We didn't know these things--of course I didn't know them but my tech people did. We couldn't afford these things, either. You have 15-20 people who make $130,000 a year, and a new company just can't do that.

Our partnership with Sun Microsystems took us from a small company with limited resources to a growing company with vast resources and customers numbering a couple of billion around the world.

Benzinga: Do you have any goals in the future concerning companies or products you'd like to collaborate with?

Amos Winbush: Totally. We're actually in the process of talking with Ford Motor Company on how we can integrate CyberSynchs into car computer systems. We are also really focused on the emerging market. We just executed a deal in Africa, and providing synchronization solutions with them, along with several deals in Central and South America. For us, the emerging market is phenomenal, we love it, and so is the established market. We have a couple US partnerships as well.

Benzinga: It sounds like CyberSynchs is expanding to be used for all sorts of different consumer devices. Did you envision this when you were starting out, or did this come as a shock to you and you just went with it?

Amos Winbush: I did not envision it. When I started I really focused on CyberSynchs as being a mobile universal synchronization company, where you can download this application and synch your content across any platform. I quickly began to questions why are we focusing only on mobile when we can put CyberSynchs into internet enabled printers, digital camera and camcorders, car computer systems, personal grooming devices, etc. We started to do all of this and then we went out and patented it, but in the very beginning, from late-2008 to mid-2009, we didn't think about that. But I quickly went to the whiteboard with my team and said guys, this is so much larger than what we thought.

And I think with me, I had to realize that the business plan that we made in the very beginning was not going to be the business a year down the road, maybe even six months down the road. You have to be able to adjust to survive and thrive. It was all about adjusting and making the proper decisions.

Benzinga: Before starting CyberSynchs, what do you wish someone had told you about entrepreneurship, creating a product, or just in general?

Amos Winbush: I was used to rejection being in the music business. You could write a song and have so many people may like it, but the record company may say no, this isn't going to be a single.

But, you never learn rejection until you actually own a company. That was something that took some time to get used to, because I had to understand that rejection was not personal, and doesn't even necessarily mean it's your technology they're rejecting. It has to do with what is on that company's plate at the time, and if they can execute it properly. It would've been helpful if someone had explained that to me in the beginning. It would've taken away a lot of sleepless nights and two-hour lunch breaks.

Benzinga: The internet and information technology are constantly evolving industries. How do you stay at the forefront of these fields, and make sure Cybersynchs is ahead of the game?

Amos Winbush: I have a really great team. I rely so much on our team, and really staying one with thinking outside of the box. I am a strong believer in thinking outside of the box. If it's the weirdest thing in the world, than its probably a great business idea. And we move forward on the weird things.

For instance, smart toothbrushes. Who thinks of that? CyberSynchs thinks of that, we're all about smart toothbrushes. We're working with a great manufacturer to integrate our system into an internet enabled toothbrush that sends data to and from the system. It talks about how long you brushed your teeth, for example, and if you haven't brushed them in a couple a days it will speed up the bristles to remove that plaque. CyberSynchs is all about thinking outside of the box.

Benzinga: Is there anything currently in the works, or newly debuted, in the internet or technology sphere that you're especially excited about or interested in?

Amos Winbush: I'm excited about how cheap data storage has become. If you have 50 million people with 64 megabytes of content on average, that's a lot of data you're storing. So the cheaper the storage prices become, the better for us.

Secondly, connectivity. I think WiFi is awesome. And they're trying to get into so many other devices to make traditional dumb devices smart. That gives us an opportunity to integrate our solution into those traditional dumb devices.

Benzinga: Your product answered a need that before had no solution-- are there any other consumer needs you feel are begging for a solution?

Amos Winbush:The insurance market, and that's something that I can't say too much about because we are entering into the insurance industry. It's going to open up a completely different market that never existed before, and we are excited with a couple of partners that we're working on. We're looking at a really great partner in the UK, where we will be providing insurance for a ton of people. But I can't say any more than that.

Benzinga: I'm gonna give you the loudspeaker now, so you can sound off on anything that's going on in the world that you think needs your attention or is not being sufficiently reported, or so you can simply give your opinion on any issue that you really care about.

Amos Winbush: Right now my main focus is science, technology, engineering, and math education. We want to prepare our kids to be competitive in the 21st century, but we are educating them in the 20th century, 1950s style. We have to change that. My main focus is getting technology into the classrooms, where it completely changes a way that a kid learns.

Growing up, we had encyclopedias readily available to us in class, now we need computers in every class, so you can hop on the internet and have that source to rely on. We need to be more competitive, and science, technology, and math are the ways that we're going to be competitive. My main focus is getting into schools and having them start to teach coding in middle school.

We need to start developing the next Google and Apple and Microsoft now, so that 15-20 years from now we can still be the leaders around the world. So that's my main focus, that's my soapbox that I'm on, and I talk to my mom and dad all the time about running a technology company, but ultimately I think education and doing something in politics is probably where I will be.

Benzinga: As a head of a business, what would you say are the essential software or internet resources that you use, or would recommend to other entrepreneurs out there?

Amos Winbush: Meetup.com is the most valuable thing that's out there. It allows an entrepreneur to get out of his/her head. In our day-to-day business we are programmed to focus on what we're doing, and as long as we're focusing on what we're doing, we feel that we're ok; we're really not. Its all about getting out there and collaborating with CEOs of other companies, finding ideas and answers to solutions that you just don't have the resources to come up with.

When you're running a company, it can be really lonely because sometimes you don't have anyone who is on the same level with you to communicate with, and you can't communicate with your staff because that brings a completely different dynamic to the table. So, get out of you head, join a Meetup group, a support group, and start making some big changes in your company.

Benzinga: That's it for this episode of Zing Talk. Thanks so much for you time and insight, Amos, it was a pleasure to have you on the show.