ExitEvent, a news partner of WRAL TechWire, profiles the six recipients of the latest NC IDEA Fund grants. This post features Cellbreaker. Profiles were written by ExitEvent Editor Laura Baverman.
DURHAM, N.C. – Jon Colgan is that teenage phenom who raked in the dough mowing lawns and pulling weeds.
He seems to have a knack for finding an opportunity, from selling mortgages to Spanish-speaking homebuyers in the Triangle, to matching the unbanked with short-term bridge loans in Utah and then along the East Coast.
Cellbreaker came from his beef with non-negotiable cell phone contracts. After his mortgage lending days and while majoring in philosophy and global studies at UNC, he perfected a method for getting out from under them, and he thought he could create an algorithm and software platform to easily and quickly do the same for everyone else. After an initial test with more than 100 people, he has 100 percent success in breaking a contract and saving a client money. His average savings so far is $225 per phone line.
And he believes his technology will be applicable to any other service industry “plagued by adhesion contracts that 99 percent favor the service provider.”
The full story can be read online at ExitEvent.
