A few weeks ago I wrote about the one iPhone application that I believe to be something that is not only useful but that has the ability to jump from being just an iPhone curiosity to the wider world and have a real impact.

The application is Bump from Bumptechnologies. David Lieb, CEO of BumpTechnologies kindly took part in an email interview with me here is what we talked about:

What sparked the idea for Bump? – Was it a back of the napkin in a coffee shop deal or a group effort in a lab somewhere?
It was really a personal frustration.  As a first-year MBA student at University of Chicago, I found myself meeting a lot of my new classmates and manually entering their contact information into my phone.  Frankly, I just got sick of that.  One day during Accounting class, the idea for Bump just hit me, and we got started building it right away.

How did you go about taking it from an idea to an actual application – had you built applications for mobile platforms before?
No, never.  Very early on I brought on two co-founders.  One of them was a former colleague of mine from my days as an engineer at Texas Instruments.  Andy bought a Mac the day after I first contacted him about Bump, and we just started going.  Apple made it very easy for us to get started on the iPhone platform, even though none of us had any mobile development experience.

How did the partnership with Apple come about, did they approach you or vice versa?
At the end of April, Bump happened to be the billionth app downloaded on the Apple iTunes App Store.  (Apple had a big countdown to see who would download the billionth app).  Well, as it turns out, a 13-year-old in Connecticut downloaded Bump as the billionth app.  Apple called us that morning to congratulate us (and warn us to be ready for lots of downloads!), and that was the beginning of a great relationship.

How much do you think you will be able to accelerate / meet your plans now that you have the backing of Sequoia?
Our main goal is to bring Bump to as many people as possible and try to make interactions using mobile devices simpler and more intuitive.  Having partners with the experience of Sequoia and our other investors is a huge asset, and their financial backing allows us to move more quickly.

In my post I talked about Bump becoming a much more pervasive technology than it is currently being used for, without giving away your plans, how close to reality do you think the post was?
As our mobile phones have gotten smarter and smarter over the years, we’ve come to depend on them for an increasingly large part of our lives — think about what you use your phone to do today versus five years ago.  But there is a big gap that has emerged: there is no easy and universal way to connect two phones that are right next to each other.  Our phones are great for interacting with people at a distance, but what about interacting with someone right next to you?  That’s the problem we are trying to solve.

One criticism of Bump is that the other person has to have the same technology, what are the other drawbacks of interacting with people in real life via mobile platforms?
That’s true — both people have to have the Bump app on their device.  The nice thing, though, is that 1) Bump is free, 2) you can find and download Bump directly from your phone in less time (~30 seconds total) than it would take to type the person’s contact information into your phone, and 3) millions of people already have installed Bump on their phones.

One of the main drawbacks of interacting with others via mobile right now is that the interactions are very limited.  There are so many ways that we interact with others at home from our computers that are really more suited to in-the-moment, in-person interactions — connecting on social networks is one example.  Instead of remembering to search for a new friend on Facebook when I get home at night, I can use Bump to connect right when I meet them.

What is the one piece of technology other than a mobile phone that you can’t live without? Or wish already existed?

Hmmm….there are so many that I can’t live without.  One that I wish existed would be faster and more energy efficient transportation.  We’re still flying in the same airplanes that were built before I was even born.  Even with video conferencing, the internet, etc, nothing beats sitting in the same room with your family or a business partner.

Do you use bump? What is the one application you think will make a difference in the coming year?