Entrepreneur Bob Tinker: From $0 to $150 Million IPO at Mobile Iron, Lessons Learned from Successes and Failures

Welcome, I'm Bob Tinker, a multi-time entrepreneur with a wealth of experience in building and scaling successful startups.

1. Bob Tinker is a multi-time entrepreneur with key achievements including the founding CEO of Mobile Iron and founding team member of Airespace.
2. Mobile Iron was started in 2008, grew from $0 to $150 million in revenue over five years, and went public on Nasdaq.
3. Airespace was sold to Cisco for $500 million in 2005.
4. Tinker grew up around technical people with a father who was an engineer and a mother who was a scientist.
5. He took things apart as a child, leading him to major in computer science and industrial engineering in university.
6. Tinker's transition to entrepreneurship occurred when he moved to California in 1996 to attend business school at Stanford.
7. His first startup was Vertical Networks, which built the first IP PBX, a phone system that runs on the internet.
8. The problem with Vertical Networks was that only big companies buy phone systems and they only do so when opening new offices, leading to slow growth.
9. Tinker learned from this experience that if you're going to be a startup, solve a problem that has pain and urgency.
10. Failure is respected in Silicon Valley as it provides important lessons on what not to do in the future.
11. Tahina, co-founder of Storm Ventures and founding CEO of Airespace, invested in and worked with Tinker at Airespace.
12. The original idea for Airespace came from a technologist at Storm Ventures who wanted to enable both cellular and Wi-Fi access in one box.
13. However, customers only wanted Wi-Fi, leading to a pivot away from cellular and the layoff of half the team.
14. Tinker became CEO of Airespace, increasing his accountability and the consequences if the company failed.
15. Confidence in the Wi-Fi-only strategy came from talking to Samsung executives who wanted to Wi-Fi enable all their laptops and consumer devices.
16. The mission of Airespace was to enable people to use Wi-Fi at work, a problem that had both pain and urgency.
17. To get the first ten customers, Tinker suggests solving a pain that has urgency and making sure you're listening to customer feedback.
18. Identifying "teaching customers" who provide valuable feedback is crucial for early stage startups.
19. Channel partners can help small startups win large enterprise customers by providing credibility.
20. In 2005, Airespace was at $80 million in revenue and had united companies against Cisco with the ABC strategy.
21. Cisco bought Airespace, leading to mixed feelings for Tinker but ultimately a good decision due to the opportunity to merge with the market leader and sell through their sales channel.
22. The acquisition marked the end of an era for Airespace, requiring the saying of goodbyes and the letting go of hard work.
23. Tinker's belief in his ability to fix companies led to poor investments where he tried to coach founders or CEOs, a lesson he learned from.
24. The confidence and formula for making good future investments comes from identifying a wave and being able to catch it and surf it.

Source: EO via YouTube

❓ What do you think? What are the most important lessons you've learned from your entrepreneurial journey, and how have they shaped your approach to investing in and guiding startups? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!