Nick Desai is the co-founder and CEO of Juice Wireless. Nick is a mobile industry veteran, serial entrepreneur and visionary.
Nick is co-inventor of Juice’s flagship, award-winning mobile social broadcasting application called JuiceCaster. For Juice, Nick has recruited a world-class management team, raised $10 million in investment capital from global leaders Qualcomm, Citizen’s Communications and 21 Ventures. Nick has led strategic positioning and business development for JuiceCaster, getting JuiceCaster distributed on 10 leading carrier decks worldwide.
When Juice started as a mobile marketing business, Nick led sales and product development, securing customers and partners including Conde Nast, Teen Vogue, GQ Magazine, Sony Connect, Gillette, AOL, Glamour Magazine, Epicurious.com, and many others.
In addition to JuiceCaster, Nick invented Juice’s innovative mobile products including MobileBday.com – a free SMS based birthday reminder service and Epi-To-Go, the award winning mobile grocery shopping list application.
Prior to Juice Wireless, Nick was a consulting partner at Sennari Games, which built Jamdat’s hugely successful bowling game. Nick was also a mobile strategy consultant to Vibe Magazine.
In 2002, Nick joined Lemko Corporation (www.lemko.com) as a principal member of the founding team. Lemko is a highly successful market leader in IP based cellular infrastructure solutions. For Lemko, Nick led business development with top-tier carriers, including Cingular/AT&T, Reliance Infocomm, Idea Cellular, Sprint PCS and Bharti Telecom.
Prior to Lemko, in 1998, Nick was Founder and CEO of Zkey.com – a multi-award winning market leader and early trailblazer in consumer mobile applications. Zkey was the first mobile address book and email WAP site available in the US, launching in 1999. Amongst many other awards and accolades, Zkey was named PC Magazine’s Editor’s Choice and Top 100 sites on the internet two years in a row. For Zkey, Nick raised nearly $15M in venture capital from Oracle, France Telecom, Omninet Capital and others. Nick also secured key customer deals with Virgin and Sprint PCS.
Nick is a frequent invited industry speaker and author. He has been an invited speaker at venues including the Brew 2007 Conference, the IAB MIXX Conference, CTIA, Under the Radar, the Mobile Social Networking Conference by Informa, and even at the Harvard Business School. Currently, Nick writes a regular column for leading online magazines MediaPost.com and iMediaConnection. From 2001 to 2004, Nick wrote a regular column called the CEO Diary for California CEO Magazine.
Nick holds an MS in Electrical Engineering from UCLA and a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from UC Irvine. Nick lives in Redondo Beach, California and enjoys cooking, surfing and playing with his incredibly cute nephew in his rare free time.