00:02:27 · Bob Tinker
[00:02:27] S5: My name is Bob Tinker. I am a multi time entrepreneur. On the professional side, my key achievements, some were successes, some were failures like a lot of entrepreneurs. Probably the one I'm most well known for is being the founding CEO of a company called MobileIron, which we started in 2008 and grew from zero to $150,000,000 of ARR over the course of five years and took it public on NASDAQ. Prior to that, I started a company or as part of the founding team at a company called Airespace, which was also a success. We sold that to Cisco for 500,000,000 in 2005. And prior to that, it was a company that did not do very well. And I learned a lot about what not to do. I grew up in the Midwestern part of The United States. My dad was an engineer and my mom was a scientist. So I think I just generally grew up being around technical people and I loved taking things apart when I was a kid. I used to take clocks apart, toys apart. You know, I was probably just destined to be an engineer even as a small child. When I went to university, I majored in computer science and industrial engineering. Started my first job as an IT manager at a bank. My big transition to become an entrepreneur, however, happened when I moved to California in 1996. I came out here to go to business school and get an MBA at Stanford. I just fell in love with becoming an entrepreneur. The idea of starting your own business, the opportunity to make a difference in the world. You know, I also saw people make a lot of money doing it. As a 28 year old coming out of grad school, that seemed like a great idea. The very first startup I worked for was one called Vertical Networks. It was an interesting idea. We built the very first IP PBX, which is basically a phone system that runs on the internet in 1998. Everybody knew that phone systems and voice and data were going to come together at the time. And it was definitely a problem that needed to be solved. The problem with vertical networks though, is only big companies buy phone systems really. And they only buy phone systems when they open up new offices. So even though it was going to be a big market over time, it was going to be very, very, very, very slow. There was no urgency in the customer's mind. So the company always struggled as a result. There were some key things I learned along the way there.
00:04:37 · Bob Tinker
The first one was if you're going to be a startup, solve a problem that has pain and urgency. The problem with my first company, Vertical Networks, was there was pain, but no urgency. Urgency answers the question, why is a customer going to buy now and not six months from now? And when you're an early stage company with very little cash, you need customers to buy now. One of the great things about Silicon Valley and one of the great things about entrepreneurship is people respect failure because you get to learn what not to do. And as long as you walked away having learned important lessons that you've put into practice to make a difference in the future, I think failure is a great teacher.
00:05:17 · Tae Hea Nahm, S0
[00:05:17] S6: Hi. I'm Tae Hea Nahm. I'm co founder of Storm Ventures. We're a venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley focused on b to b software companies. I have invested in over 200, of which 12 have become unicorns. I've also... Was a founding CEO of Airespace that we sold to Cisco for about 500,000,000. So when Airespace first got started, I was just an investor, but I was the only investor, and the company was incubated at Storm office. So the original idea for aerospace came from someone that was working at Storm, Tim Danforth. He was a technologist out of Cisco and has a lot of experience. He came up with the idea of having one infrastructure to support both cellular and Wi Fi access. I like the idea of Wi Fi and cellular because then you can support all wireless in one box. I thought that people will want to have, simple and easy wireless access. And so I figured Wi Fi would be the way because Wi Fi leverages open spectrum, so it's free. It's not like cellular where you have to pay a cellular. Ad[00:06:27] S0: This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses, setup required, compatibility, and availability varies 18 plus.
00:06:27 · S0, S1, S2, S7, S8
Ad[00:06:27] S0: This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses, setup required, compatibility, and availability varies 18 plus. Ad[00:06:52] S1: Kate holds the key to every brand asset your business has ever made. She's the only person who knows the difference between teal, turquoise, and the correct company blue, but she's going on vacation. Luckily, before the company falls into design disarray, you realize you can put Kate into Canva. Save every color font and logo to a brand kit everyone can access, and Kate can vacation happily in the knowledge that no one will ever use Comic Sans. What will you Canva today? Ad[00:07:22] S2: This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Ad[00:07:52] S7: The secret society of semi homemade? Ad[00:07:54] S8: Listen up. Sam's Club has premade dishes
00:07:54 · S8, S9, S2
Ad[00:07:54] S8: Listen up. Sam's Club has premade dishes Ad[00:07:57] S9: for a Thanksgiving feast that's ready in two hours, all while tasting suspiciously homemade. Ad[00:08:03] S2: Come join us. Sam's Club. Individual oven times may vary.
00:08:07 · Tae Hea Nahm
[00:08:07] S6: Our provider. So that was my belief and why we started Airespace. And to be honest, the beginning of Airespace was really hard. I actually hired four people to do cellular, four people to do Wi Fi. But then as we talked to customers, we realized that customers just wanted WiFi only. That's why we pivoted to WiFi only, I had to actually lay off half the team at that point. I remember one of the people I laid off moved him from outside The United States to Silicon Valley to do this company, and then I had to lay him off. It was tough to lay off 50%. Well, alternative is we shut the whole company down, and I lay off a 100%. And this also was in 2002 when Silicon Valley was going through a very difficult time. At that moment, given the difficulty of Silicon Valley, the problems that Airespace had in the beginning because we were pursuing the wrong product strategy, the natural temptation will be to shut it down. And the only way I could persuade my partners that we should continue funding is for me to become the CEO of the company. But that also increased my accountability, and that meant if the company failed, I'd be fired. And one thing that boosted my confidence that we should continue is, I was talking to Samsung executives, and they were saying how they want to have WiFi enable all their, like, laptops and consumer devices. And that gave me confidence that maybe this is the beginning of a wave. And then once I believed in the WiFi only, then we needed to hire out the rest of the engineering team, the go to market people, and ultimately my replacement, who was employee number 24. And as I was talking to one of the investors now about the go to market, I mentioned we want to pursue one based on partnerships. And that's when, my co investors introduced Bob and saying, will be very good at partnerships.