Very Cool! But will Dash Navigation fulfill its promise?

I just learned about Dash Navigation. Dash is a GPS navigation system with a difference - It’s connected to the Internet. The big thing they promote is that this allows you to get real, and real-time traffic info that is anonymously sent to their servers by other users on the road at the same time. This is a really cool concept. I use Google Maps on my Blackberry Curve right now to give me an idea which road I should take home. Its hard to say what to make of the yellow line on the map which is what I usually see – sometimes I have a reasonable ride, sometimes I feel like I’m back in NYC on the Long Island Expressway on a Friday afternoon in the summer. So the prospect of finding out how fast someone was driving on the road ahead of me 5 minutes ago or less is compelling. Maybe its not just about getting to my destination quicker, but high confidence that I can stop for coffee, and still get to my destination on time.

The premise behind this exciting concept is that there will be adequate data from someone 5 minutes ahead of me any time of the day on all major roadways. That assumes of course that there are so many units out there, that there’s no problem getting that data. The challenge of course, is that Dash is a start-up, albeit a well-funded start-up, and they are entering a market with more than a couple of ‘standard’ GPS competitors, including Garmin, and TomTom who have received pretty good reviews for their products. But it also begs the question – how do I have an internet connection while I’m traveling on the highway? The answer – a WWAN connection, like my phone. I pay a monthly fee for my phone connectivity, will I have to pay a monthly fee for this service? Dash’s website doesn’t say, but if you do, this is probably a deal-breaker. Sure they’ll get people to pay, but it will dramatically slow their growth even if the product and service is great. Remember the stories for years about how long it was taking Tivo to get to one million customers? If it takes that long, Garmin and TomTom will catch up, unless they are figuratively asleep at the wheel.

So here is what I’m hoping for. They already have a partnership with Yahoo. Yahoo has a partnership with AT&T. I have a relationship with AT&T – I pay money to them (though I have always hated AT&T’s branding campaigns back when they were the old AT&T, and the new AT&T – is it possible that both incarnations used the same bad branding agency?). So can the Dash service be free for AT&T customers? What about if some form of advertising was on the Dash unit from Yahoo partners, and the advertisers subsidized my service fee? Better yet, what if Dash could demonstrate that people who used their product clicked on and physically visited the places promoted on the Dash unit? And that this model was so lucrative, that this advertising revenue subsidized the cost of the unit, making it cheaper than TomTom or Garmin. Could there be a new advertising model for local stores, gas stations, etc? Sure, Amazon will pay if someone clicks through to their virtual store, but what about the old fashioned physical store that no longer sees ROI in advertising on the radio? Wouldn’t they be willing to pay a pretty penny for people who visited their establishment because someone found it while out driving and walked in the door? The answer is of course yes.

Hopefully Dash is thinking this way. Not only building those advertising relationships, but also really getting drivers to frequent establishments, building the means and metrics to track actual consumer behavior and convince those advertisers that the data is real, engage in viral marketing to get as many units seeded as quickly as possible in a few key markets (Geoffrey Moore’s Bowling Alley – knock down a few pins first), and then intend to price below their competition. Only then will they have a chance at success. Otherwise they’ll just be another Tivo that we all love and wish they had become wildly successful.