Why a Founder's Journey Is Never Linear | Krenar Komoni, CEO of Tive

What does it take to build a global supply chain company from a basement prototype? Krenar Komoni, CEO and founder of Tive, joins Jess DeForge and Bryon Beilman for a candid conversation about a career that has been anything but linear.

Krenar shares the pivots, near-failures, and defining moments behind Tive, now on track for $100M in revenue and growing at 50% annually. From designing wireless chips in Boston to watching his father-in-law struggle with outdated logistics tools, he traces the winding path that led to one of the fastest-growing supply chain visibility companies in the world.

In this episode, Krenar talks about getting the entrepreneurship bug at 16 while helping launch a TV station in Kosovo, the bottom-up management lesson he learned as a junior engineer that he still uses as CEO, why almost every early assumption about Tive's market was wrong, the $10,000-in-the-bank moment that cemented his conviction, and what Tive actually tracks.

If you're a founder, operator, or anyone navigating a path that doesn't follow a straight line, this one is worth your time.

Learn more about Tive at tive.com and connect with Krenar on LinkedIn. Visit iuvotech.com for more Edge of Excellence episodes.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

This is the Edge of Excellence, empowering people to shape the future. Let's inspire, innovate, and explore together. Hello, and welcome to The Edge of Excellence. I'm Jesta Forg, and today we are talking about the lessons that come from a career path that has been anything but linear.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Yeah, and I'm Brian Beilman, and joining us today is Krinar Kamani, CEO and founder of Tive. Krunar and I go way back. We we work together at Bitwave and RFI, and I watched them build Tive from an idea into a fast-growing global supply chain company.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

Krinar, welcome to the Edge of Excellence. Thanks, Brian. Really good seeing you here. Thanks for inviting me to uh to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Yes, no, we're so happy to have you here. And I'd love for you to start by just telling us a little bit about yourself and who you are, where you're based and what you're doing right now.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

Yeah, I'm based in Boston, specifically Charlestown, where our office is. Uh what my name is uh Krenar, I'm the founder and CEO of Tive. And what we do is we we help companies all over the world track shipments and understand what's happening with their supply chains.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Amazing. And can you take us back to your earlier career? So, like what drew you to radio frequencies and wireless chip design in the first place?

SPEAKER_02 1:19

Yeah, that's um a company that Brian and I worked at together. It was a startup um uh called Bitchwave Semiconductor. And this was in Chumps for Mass uh at a Wang Tower. I think a lot of people know that as the Wang Tower. Still remember going to the seventh floor there. But the first time I got that job was as an intern um after I finished my junior in college at Norwich University, and the CTO of Bitwave, Jeff Daw, uh would came to Norwich, interviewed a bunch of students, and picked me and another guy to come in and uh do the internship. This is 2005, right? I think so. 2005. And that's where I met Brian too, because Brian, you're running all the IT for Bitwave semiconductor, which is really cool. And uh what we were doing at Bitwave was building a software-defined radio on a chip. So you could use software to change the chip to do 2G, 3G, 4G, LTE, Wi-Fi, and all you could do is like program filters, program digital analog converters, the RF uh chain. And I learned a lot about wireless uh uh from the team there. I did a lot of work and then design and just fell in love with wireless because like we're talking right now, uh we have Wi-Fi going on and there's no wires, uh, microphone has no wires. It's pretty amazing uh wireless and how abstract it is and how powerful it is.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Now, as a little side, if I remember correctly, did you have a ponytail back then?

SPEAKER_02 2:59

Yes, I did. Uh definitely. Not oh my god, June year, I did. Then I cut it. And then I cut it. Yeah, junior year, I it was during that time that I cut my ponytail, but uh when I joined, I had a ponytail.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

How long? Like shoulder length like mine?

SPEAKER_02 3:19

Uh yeah, I my hair was up to here. I mean, big Metallica fan.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Ah, yeah, that'll do it.

unknown 3:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

So, Krenar, when we had chatted previously, you talked about a project that sounded almost too cool to be real. Um, about an RF transmitter designed to sit on a bullet for a government program. Can you tell us a little bit more about that story?

SPEAKER_02 3:45

I don't know if I can go too much into detail, but all I know. I think you just mentioned RFI. Um, and I did uh some part-time work there um that was on a consulting basis. Uh it was a few months, I believe. And the work that they were doing, I was working on a little bit because this is radio frequencies and chip design. Uh the the but there was a specific program that we couldn't know exactly where it is, but after a few weeks and months, I think I figured out that it had to do with a program. And I don't think it became a reality because I think it's very difficult. But the idea was to build a radio uh uh TXRX, which is a transmitter receiver, a whole radio that's tiny on a chip, and would be able to sit on a bullet. So every bullet that would get fired, be able to communicate and know what's going on. Um and and that's it. That's all I know about the project. I don't think I know anything else anymore.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

That sounds really cool. What did the years in chip design teach you that you still use as a CEO today?

SPEAKER_02 4:56

I think the biggest one, I think Brian, you still remember probably at Bitwave when we were trying to tape out chips. And it's always was like, well, it's gonna be taping out next month and next month and next month. And I as an I was just design engineer. I had just joined as a as a junior like an engineer, and I still remember asking Jeff, the CTO. I'm like, Jeff, uh, can I talk to engineers and figure out maybe there's a different timeline? Like if I go talk to all the individuals and figure out what's going on, maybe I can figure out on a higher level instead of just this top-down. He's like, go ahead. I'm like, well, I don't not like a CTO or a VP or anything. He's like, don't just go do it. So then what I did is I went uh as I learned that lesson, which is sometimes you just gotta do things. You can't ask for permission or wait for somebody to tell you to do something. You just have to take that initial step. And then after talking to all the engineers and all the parts of the system and the chip that we were working on, I built this spreadsheet trying to figure out when are we gonna be really finishing this thing. I was off by two weeks, which is not bad overall. But I learned a big lesson there that the best way sometimes is bottom up. And uh that's why I think leadership-wise, I I work a lot with my executive team and my leadership team, but I talk to almost every employee if I can and if I could, if I had the time, trying to understand what's really going on with the business, because I think bottom up you get to learn a lot.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Yeah, as a side for our listeners, can you tell people what a tape out is?

SPEAKER_02 6:43

Oh, tape out. Tapeout means like when you're taping out a chip. I mean, so in a as a fabulous, meaning a company that doesn't own the factory that makes the chips, and the factories that make the chips, maybe people have heard of, like TSMC, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. There's the one that were making the wafers. What you do is you're designing everything, you're designing the transistors, doing the layout on how it's gonna be and all the drawings, and you take this essentially painting and you're sending the painting to the factory. That's when you're doing the tape out. Uh, and your chip is like done, it's designed, and they're gonna go now and print it and etch it and build it on this wafer. And then you take this wafer after the tape out, and then you cut it uh into small chips, like some wafers have a few thousands of chips in there, and then you put it in a package, and then uh there you go, then you have a chip.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Yeah, I think a long time ago before we we we ended up like just FTPing the files to TSMC, and here it's a big you know electronic bundle. I think the tapeout used to be like before you had the internet, you had to put it put it on a tape, a digital tape, and ship it and say, here that here's our design, read it. And so, but everyone's even today, everyone says tapeout. And uh, you know, and I I when you talked about tape out trying to find out how to get it within two weeks, that's pretty amazing because you know there's always delays, but during a tape out from an IT perspective, the engineers are are like that final push to get the tape out. Engineers are stressed, systems are stressed, everything that that you know, like it all compounds and everything's kind of exciting, but uh it's it can be a stressful period, I think.

SPEAKER_02 8:28

Oh yeah, that's those last two weeks are the most stressful. And what happens is also you gotta meet the timeline because the factories need to do your tape out during this time. Next week they have NVIDIA, the week after they have that Microsoft, um, then you gotta meet that deadline. It's very, very tough. Otherwise, you're off by another three months potentially. But think about FTP, right? And NVIDIA GPU that's very expensive, like and make it's a trillion plus dollar valuation company, their IP is this FTP file. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, SMC, which is pretty crazy to think about.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

So I'm curious at what point you started thinking of yourself as an entrepreneur? Like, how did that journey transition?

SPEAKER_02 9:18

I I so I've always worked for small small companies, I've never worked for a big company in my life. The largest company I've ever worked for is the one I'm at right now, which is Thyves. And the entrepreneurship bug, I would say, was in me since I was 14, 12, maybe even. But uh, when I was 16 years old, I worked for a TV station that was being launched in Kosovo. I'm originally from Kosovo, and I was 16, and I went, I worked with all these people who are way older than me, and I was building 3D animations like when the news jingle comes up, like news or latest news, or you know, those 3D things that pop up?

SPEAKER_03 9:59

Oh, cool.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

Um, I was working on that, and within the next three, four months, we had to launch a brand new TV station. And since then, I was like, you can create something out of nothing, and then hundreds of thousands of people are watching this TV station out of the blue. This was September of 2000 after the war. Um, I was it just you once you do that once it's you you it's it's a bug in you. Entrepreneurship, you can't doesn't leave. Like, I just it's part of it was part of me since I was a kid.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

Oh wow. No, that's really cool. Brian, I'm curious as an entrepreneur yourself, if you feel similarly.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

Oh, very similar. I I I think I wanted to uh start a company since I was like even in college. And then I remember uh you know, we're I ended up working for a decently sized company. My first company was called Storage Tech, which became Sun, then became Oracle. It's like one of these big things. But I remember my my aunt was uh she was a house cleaner, and I said, I want to I want to help you expand your business. I want to, I we're gonna put a business business plan, we're gonna do this whole thing. I remember meeting her at her house, trying to trying to figure out how like you know, like let's do a marketing plan and all that. I was really interested in not just what I was doing, but the whole business process. And uh so it that's it was it was in me too, uh from a from a long period. I don't know whether it's always the case. I uh it's like I think if you do it just for the wrong reason, like you gotta have your power, like you'll see, you know, Krenar, you've you've had, I'm sure this is a hasn't been it's been ups and downs. And if you don't have the fortitude saying, I really want to do this, it's not gonna happen, right? You have to have that passion in you. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 11:38

I think the people sometimes ask, what's one thing you want to tell people? I'm like, it's not if you want to start something, it's not the what, it's not the how, it's really the why. If you if your reason is oh, I just want to make money, like the moment you hit an obstacle, you just gotta give up because the why is not big enough, and that why is very important.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Well, Kernard, something you said about you know, you were working in a TV station, and it made me think, um, and I don't know if the listeners have if you I don't know if they're still around, but I can recall early days of Tive. What like I I've been following the company for a while, and you got really fantastic commercials or or ads, I guess, right? You had videos, like, and I was like, these are really professionally done. I think you had them done in Kosovo, I think maybe you had some people there. I mean, so you've had this kind of I mean, we we could maybe we'll dig in this a little bit later on, but but I think uh there's a technical element, but there's a creative element, and there's uh that all comes together. It seems like you've got uh many hats, I would say.

SPEAKER_02 12:35

That's a very good point and observation, by the way, because um here's how the company uh kind of got formulated. In 2015, we all had iPhones, we're going to the app store, we got this beautiful device in our hands, yeah. Everything just looks slick, it's very good, good user interface. And then I go and go to the trucking company, which my father-in-law had, and you look at the apps and you look at the device that's tracking the truck, and then devices that are out there, these GPS trackers, like a blacks box with a switch turning on and off. I'm like, people in the warehouse are people, people in logistics are also people, people like myself using an iPhone are also humans. I think people in the business also in in everyday enterprise and dealing with supply chain logistics deserve good design and good taste and good experiences. And that part of my mom was a poet and a uh journalist. My dad was a mechanical engineer, and I think somehow I got both the brains a little bit. Uh and so I when I started time, I said I'm gonna build something that's beautiful, like just a very nice tracker that people appreciate and look and like. And this was the one of the first ones here, and it's just it's slick, it's easy, you press the button, you put it on the shipment, you get to know exactly where the shipments are, but then you go to the platform, you go to the the the software, and it's very intuitive and easy to use and easy to set up. Um, so between design, it's not all just engineering and technical. I always appreciated the design part of things too. And I think then that comes into marketing and brand and commercials that you talked about. Um, I think at the end I tell people I want two feelings out of our customers. I want customers to number one, trust us because we're doing the job that we're supposed to do. And number two, I want them to love us. And love is a very like Coca-Cola. If you look at the commercials and things, like you get a you see a burger and a Coca-Cola and a French fries, you're like, ah, I want that. Yeah, yeah. It's a different feeling. It's not about the sugar and the water and the sparkles, it's more than that. Um, and I say same with Thai. It's when people want to see that brand, I want that that feeling of love uh beyond just the trust and the job that we got to do.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Yeah, well, you mentioned brand, I think um it makes me think about part of there's an extra section in my book, I talk about brand as uh basically a it's the other side of a coin of culture. So you built a culture like we love our product, we want to make our customers happy, we can deliver on this, and you do everything to promote that brand, promote it. And on the outside is your brand, is your promise to your customers. And when those things, those, those, those two things align, I think it can be very powerful because if they don't align, like if you're in great engineering, you don't tell a great story or you're a great story, but your your product doesn't live up to it, those are mismatches. And I think I I would what I think what do you how do you feel uh about that? Does that you that does it resonate with you?

SPEAKER_02 15:53

Yeah, 100%. And then I think the thing that ties them to just you making me think I could be wrong what I'm just saying right now, but I believe the thing that ties both of them together are values. So if you look at on our value side of things, like we have mission and vision and values and brand and culture, but values, number one for Tive and the way we've built it, and the way I've always wanted to build a company was transparency first. And I mean, it's I'm not gonna say anything about the past and other startups that we worked for. But um transparency is key. And if you're transparent, that means you're transparent with employees, you're transparent with customers, that means if you're transparent with customers, that's your brand. Transparent with employees, that's the culture, but it's being driven by these things that are connecting those two together. Uh, another value that we have is we hold each other's backs and we hold customers back if they're struggling with, and if we hold employees' backs together and we hold each other's back, and it's the culture and the brand, I think being tied by values just made me think. So I 100% agree. Yeah. But imagine if the values don't like there's a misalignment. Like we're saying customer always right, then what about employees? Or employees everything, and employees are always right. What about the customers? Like that's a bad value if you say something generic like that.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

Sure. Yeah, yeah. And your and your and your and your values are like the guide rails. Like as long as you stick the people could make decisions, as long as those those you're transparent, you have each other back, like it, those are the things that allows people to be, I guess, empowered, right, to do the right thing. They know, they know this is what we stand for. Yeah, absolutely. I would say even your transparency also relates to your product, right? You're you're giving your your customers transparency into where their shipments are, right? They know, like they just look at the like they know where their shipments are, they know how all the you know, all the the the characteristics of whatever the so you're transparent with your customers, but you're also providing them with transparency to their business.

SPEAKER_02 18:03

Yes, correct. Because if now think of when a shipment moves from point A to point B. Any shipment going from Boston to LA or from uh Shanghai to to uh Long Beach, it it's not just one human doing all the work. It's not me taking it, swimming, and then bringing it. There's a lot of uh hand handovers, it's not a handoffs between truck driver going to dredge, going to port, going to the vessel from the vessel to another port, another dredge, another truck, another warehouse, another distribution center. There's a lot of handoffs, a lot of companies, different companies handling this product. And what happens is not just the shipper, the persons who owns the goods is seeing that for their own transparency, but creates transparency of communication with everybody. Because now the carrier, the shipper, logistics service provider, the uh the shipping company, all of them are have to be transparent, want to be transparent because of this. And it just makes the makes the communication easier, faster, more efficient, and then suddenly you get to to make decisions quicker, which is very important in logistics.

SPEAKER_01 19:20

The way that you talk about your values, your culture, and then you know, how that translates to the success of your company is reminding me very much about the way you know we talk at AUVO and and the foundation that Brian and Jeff have laid here at AUVO. So I'm curious to ask if you find or if you can speak to the value in culture and supporting your employees. You mentioned like having each other's back and how that translates to value for your clients and customers.

SPEAKER_02 19:49

I mean, yeah, I can probably do that for every single value, but that'll take an hour. But that's a good one on it having each other's back. Because it I would say very concretely, maybe even specifically, uh, cases if a customer has an issue with the tracker, they reach out to customer support. But then customer support works with the sales people, works with the account management team, and then they all three are trying to figure out potentially what's going on if there's an issue. Uh then they each have each other's backs, and then the customer sees that transparency in them working together, and then suddenly the customer feels like there's a unity at drive, and it's not support, finger pointing to customer success, finger pointing account management, finger pointing to salesperson, finger pointing to finance, finger point to engineering, finger pointing to hardware.

SPEAKER_03 20:47

Right.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

Everybody's got each other's back, and then the customer actually not just sees that on an email, but feels it that this is a unified voice coming from Type to them. Uh, if there's an issue on an invoice, then accounts receivable together with sales, together with account management are working together and having each other's back, and through that, have through that value, right? There's yeah, if having each other's back is like the opposite of finger pointing, right? Yeah, the opposite of blame to another department or another person or another thing. So think of if because it's the opposite, creates unity, and as unity when you go to customer, customer feels that and says, Well, this company actually, first of all, I want to work with them, but second, I can't use it against them. Yeah, because if you see, I mean, divide and conquer, right? If you see a company that's dispersed and department A and B and C are saying different things, then you have leverage. You can say, I'm not gonna pay the invoice on time, I'll pay the 30 days when you do B, and then the B says I'll do C. If you don't want to pay a bill, you can do whatever you want. Um, and you can see that and some people might take advantage. I'm not, I'm just usually our customers won't do that, but I'm saying potentially somebody a bad actor could. But when you come unified, there's nothing they can do.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

Well, you know, you that makes me think of something else. So you the things you've had to do in the technology and this, this what you're doing is is you're innovating and and really doing stuff that people haven't done before. And I think part of that is for people to take some risks and say, we're gonna try this out, we're gonna try this. And so in order to take a risk, you have to have psychological safety. Like it's okay to try to take a risk because I know people have my back. And they're not gonna blame me. They're gonna say, okay, I tried this thing, and what'd you learn? Oh, it didn't work, but we learned something from that, let's do it better. Maybe, maybe you know, the engineering works with uh account management, like, oh, the customer doesn't like that. Great, let's let's do a feedback loop, you know. So I think if by that that core value also, I would think, also drives innovation in your company.

SPEAKER_02 22:58

Uh yeah, I mean, one of the hard values is relentless innovation, relentless innovation, relentless iteration, which means you're gonna fail. So you have to iterate. You're gonna fail. You gotta iterate, iterate, iterate, like the Thomas Edison concept of took a thousand times to figure out the uh bulb. And by the way, I just learned WD40, which is for the uh for the what is for corrosion. What does it do? I forget.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

Well, it's a lubricant. It's a lubricant and and gets rid of uh a corrosion, but every yeah, yeah, rust.

SPEAKER_02 23:27

Yeah. So the guy tried it 40 times. That's why it's WD40. I didn't know that either. I just learned it two days ago. It's not it 39 times, didn't work, and the 40th time he figured out the actual lubricant that worked.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

Yeah, I think it's called it stands for water displacement 40, I think is what it stands for. There we go.

SPEAKER_02 23:47

So yeah, yeah, yeah. That means you gotta fail 39 times. So yeah, risk is, and now, I mean, especially with AI, like everybody's trying everything, can't even stop it.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

Yeah. No, it's so true. And it's interesting because both of you are successful entrepreneurs, both of you have talked about needing to have, you know, a foundation of a quality product or service. And then um this other piece of the culture and the values, I think, is just as important and like making sure that your people are well taken care of because they're the ones that are serving your clients, and so it just creates this whole package of a company that people really want to work with and refer, which is really cool that both of you kind of share that same mindset um when it comes to your companies. When we did our pre-call, Brian actually made a point to talk about the fact that no real success is linear. And so I'm wondering if looking back across your career, if you see that most clearly in any one spot that you could speak to.

SPEAKER_02 24:50

Um yeah, Jessica, I think it's definitely non-linear. Um, I know it sounds cheesy, but as long as I look at things one day at a time, and I tell my team, even sometimes I use that sometimes term too much sometimes. Um just say one day at a time, one day at a time. Literally, all we can do is do our best today. We're not guaranteed tomorrow, and yesterday is just gone. Like there is no way we can do anything. So if I look at it that way, which it just seems like yes, it's nonlinear because some days are hard, some weeks are hard, some months are harder, some years are worse, some years are better. But all I know is that I'm doing my best today. Uh, and the rest kind of takes care of itself. But yeah, it's and then the other part is another cheesy term taking lemons and turning them into lemonade. I mean, I got married, my wife's dad at a trucking company, I knew wireless and RM like, let me track your trucks. Like, it just people sometimes think too much and overthink and when and how. And when I started Tive, my daughter was two, two and a half, and my son was my in my wife's belly. Uh, like, there is no, oh, let me wait until he's born, or let me wait until I graduate, or let me wait. Like, there's just no time, like, there's no good time. It's just now it's today. And some, I think cheesy, like, do your best today and turn lemons into lemonade. But uh, I think it works.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Well, I want to when you just said that, when I started Aivo trying to think uh my kids were very young, and I remember people say, How are you what do you what what how are you gonna pay the bills? What if you do this? Like, this sounds really risky, and uh, you know, and so uh I remember saying, Well, you know, I I I guess I believe I I would say two things. Like, I I believe in what I have to offer, and either I gotta try it and either succeed or fail, but I you know, I need to try it. And and so and I think that's uh it sounds like you have very similar to my side. You got you got very young children, you know, it's life is super busy at that time, and right, and so but you just did it.

SPEAKER_02 27:13

Yeah. I mean, the other thing, the trick you can play is do you want to do it when you're older?

SPEAKER_03 27:18

Or no?

SPEAKER_02 27:20

Yeah, yeah. Every day we're getting older, every day.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

So well, and it goes back to that why and how important that why is because that's what's gonna power you through when you know it is nonlinear and it's difficult. So, Kernar, you you talked about, you know, starting based off of a problem that you saw, you know, with your father-in-law and his job, and you're building this prototype while you have a small child and went on the way. When did things start to feel less like a side project and more like a real company that you're going to put everything into?

SPEAKER_02 27:53

There's multiple ways I can answer it, but I think I'll answer it the way that maybe uh the most way like psychologically meant for me more than more than the oh, we started selling one cool metric, right? In 2019, end of 2019, when we my BPO technology myself went to China, figured out a partner, we build these trackers, finally figure out how to crack the code on single-use trackers. We started selling thousand units at a time. I think we cracked the like that. Okay, we this is gonna be big. But before that, uh, I would say even six, seven months before that, the thing that really we were running out of money in 2015. I started it, and this is called July of 2019. We had 10,000, $20,000 in the bank, and I would go literally for long walks and runs and trying to just figure out I would be on calls with tens of angel investors and VCs and everybody trying to pitch and raise. But one thing that I realized why I'm not gonna give up and I'm gonna continue was something changed in me where I said, even if the company goes bankrupt, next week I'm gonna start it again and do this thing again. Like that that was the moment I would say this was around July, uh June, July of 2019, where that switch I guess flipped. We asked for that. Um that that's where I realized I guess it's gonna be big and I'm not gonna stop. That is the definition of that's 2019, maybe we're like 150, 200,000 in revenue.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 29:53

That's grit right there. That's a grit, you know, like you were just uh you're gonna you're gonna succeed at all costs. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:02

At all costs, yeah, that's that's right.

SPEAKER_01 30:05

It's interesting when you're talking about going for a run and like the stress that you were under as you know, the company is losing money and you're just not really sure, you know, what the future is going to hold in the near future. Um, we've had so many conversations lately with successful people, and there's this common thread of like walking, running, getting outside, stepping away from like sitting at your computer and you know, addressing the problem or putting all these hours in in front of the computer and the problem. It's just so interesting to me that this seems to be a common thread for very successful people and entrepreneurs as a way to kind of like allow yourself to think bigger and to problem solve, um, which I think is just really neat.

SPEAKER_02 30:46

During those difficult times, when even when I was, like I mentioned, calling 10, 20 investors and VCs being transparent, I was not doing them for my office. Yeah. I was outside, like 20, 30, 40 feet away, but I was in a parking lot, I was somewhere walking, just it just wanted to didn't want to be uh isolated, wanted to be just it you're trying to solve a big problem, uh, and you gotta do it, you do it quick. And you're right, when you go out, I don't know, just motion creates emotion, so you get you get body to move and you start moving differently.

SPEAKER_01 31:27

I like that. So as you got out into the market, were your initial assumptions about who the customer was and what they needed accurate?

SPEAKER_02 31:37

No.

SPEAKER_01 31:39

Can you walk us through?

SPEAKER_02 31:43

Well, at first I thought my customer is my father-in-law who owns trucks. And then I yes, I started tracking trucks for a month or two, and month two I pivoted. Even then, when I pivoted, I still had challenges. But in the beginning, I thought it was trucking companies, and I was gonna track trucks. There are like three, four million trucks in the United States, uh, and I was gonna build really cool software to track trucks. But then I realized there's actually a lot of companies trying to do that, and then I realized nobody was really tackling this design experience around tracking the goods on the back of the truck, not just the actual cabin and the driver, but the actual stuff in the back of the trailer because stuff goes in and goes up and goes in and goes up. Um, so yeah, it was beginning. I thought it was trucking companies and then changed it to actual people who care about the goods inside the truck.

SPEAKER_00 32:38

We were talking in the on the pre-call a little bit, even even the market for the products that you were gonna track. You had an initial assumption about which vertical or you would go towards. That changed a little bit too, even right?

SPEAKER_02 32:48

Oh, yeah. In the beginning, I'm like, vaccines, pharma. I'm gonna track like it's obvious temperature control, life science, drugs, and and then I realized I got really hit hard there because when it comes to regulation, when it comes to regulatory requirements, when it comes to meeting the pharma requirements, they're not gonna just get any startup to track Pfizer vaccines or like any any um it took took me oh, I would say until sometime last year uh to get to pharma compliance and regulatory requirements and SOC2 type 2 and NISO and um it took the company a long time to get there. But then what I had to do is had to go, we we went into food, uh, which was a really good uh vertical, and we're very proud of how well we do there. And we just I just love food customers, and then we've expanded into high-value electronics, industrial, logistics service providers, and also um life sciences now. But I thought life science was gonna be a piece of cake, but it wasn't.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

Yeah, we I mean anything that's regulatory, they especially when you're in the phase three and beyond, like it's it's really rig rigorous, uh what you have to uh you know to uh apply uh to have on your systems and how you handle things, right? Any little change, even in the software, like well, it's uh if you change the operating system, you have to make this note because it might change how the you know how they measure this the value. So they they're very particular. So totally feel that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:34

Did you start with a particular vertical or kind of it was more geographical for you?

SPEAKER_00 34:39

Uh semiconductors. That's right. Uh I had a number of startups. Our first four, three, four customers were all fabulous semiconductor companies. Uh, and then we just kind of branched out. And then we didn't really have a defined vertical. We're like, we have some experience in this, and people said, Yeah, well, it needs your help. And then uh, and we we widened and then we narrowed down the road. So we have we're we're down the three verticals now, but we we've uh because if we found who works for us and who doesn't work for us, or what where we can deliver the most value is where I like to say. Yeah, makes sense, makes sense. Nice.

SPEAKER_01 35:13

So we talked a little bit about you know, stepping away, walking, jogging, and you know, clearing your head, and and how that can really help your business. Um, I'd love to hear from you how you create balance if you feel you have balance between all the responsibilities you have with running the successful company and then just life.

SPEAKER_02 35:33

I don't think there's a balance. Yeah, I don't I don't think there's a balance. It's whatever the world is needing and how it works. It just it uh it teeter, totters, it's I don't there's no such thing as like let's say 50-50, right? Or I keep it at 75, 25. It's sometimes it's 99.9 work, sometimes family is very important because we gotta do something that's uh very critical and something's going on. And um there needs to be some balance for sure, but I think it's it's yeah, it's tough to answer, honestly. I I don't I don't don't have like a perfect answer there.

SPEAKER_01 36:13

No, that's okay. I think that's the one day at a time, right? Like you just think what the day is bringing you as it comes.

SPEAKER_00 36:20

Well, you know, just uh when you said one day at a time, it makes me think about Jeff, so my co-founder. Jeff is often, I'm I'm usually like, let's go big, let's do this. He's like, Okay, let's just make these incremental improvements about this. And usually has to talk me down a little bit and like, okay, we we we got this good and we we can't bite off too much, let's just do one, you know, kind of one day at a time. And so I think you and Jeff have some more.

SPEAKER_02 36:40

Maybe I can ask the your your question actually one thing that's true, Jessica, is compared to 2015, 2016, 2017, where as a founder and entrepreneur, you do so much on your own. It's different. Now with 300 people, I rely so much on my team. I have a great executive team, amazing people that work for them. Um it it's different. Um, it it lets me have a little bit more time to think about strategy and where we're gonna go as a business. Uh, yes, I I'll still take that one day at a time, but compared that that was the in the beginning, there was like no balance.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:24

It was the 99% just work, work, work, work, work. Because if I didn't put it in, it was nobody else. Uh being a solo founder is also very hard. Um because you have to juggle everything between you and you.

SPEAKER_01 37:40

Yeah. No, absolutely. Now I'm I'm glad that you have the team that you have. It sounds like they're very supportive. Um, can you talk a little bit about how you built a team that now allows you to have a little bit more of that space and capacity?

SPEAKER_02 37:55

Um, it's honestly time and um as you scale, it this is just a fact is that some people will scale and some people will not scale. Uh but the business needs to scale, and customers want you to scale, and the world needs you to scale. Uh, so the management has changed uh multiple times. If I go from day zero uh from day one or two, or like in the beginning, there was no management, and then a year later, some management, and probably layers have changed four or five times. And if maybe one department is more and another department is less. Um but finding people, what I've realized is was more important to find people who really have gone through this scale and have experienced it at least once. And then when they come here, it just seems like second nature for them, and it's a little easier for them to do. But the ones who are trying to let's say simple example is they've done a great job at a million-dollar company, and the most they've seen maybe is a five million dollar company. Now we're here, we're trying to grow from five to twenty five. Uh, maybe, maybe it's hard for them, right? And they cannot do it. But some people do a really good job at morphing and changing and listening and scaling. Um, but yeah, I'm I'm just grateful that we've had the team that we have today.

SPEAKER_01 39:26

No, that's amazing. So you're talking about the level of growth um that you've experienced over the past several years. What does that growth feel like from where you're sitting today?

SPEAKER_02 39:36

Um, it uh if I look 10 years ago, I by the way, company started 11 years ago on June 8th.

SPEAKER_03 39:46

So we're it's gone.

SPEAKER_02 39:48

It's really cool. This has been 11 years, uh, probably when this podcast goes live. But um uh it's we're hundred we're gonna be 100 million in revenue this year.

SPEAKER_01 40:01

Congratulations.

SPEAKER_02 40:02

We've shipped more than four four million devices to date. Um, and we're still growing at 50% a year, which is pretty impressive.

SPEAKER_03 40:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:13

Trying to continue that scale. It I don't know, if it feels very exciting compared to uh when you're small and trying to figure things out. I like but I I love both parts. Um yeah, it just it's it's it's uh this is how I would say this time is different, is I'm very grateful and privileged and honored that we as a company have quote unquote the right, and we are here to be able to execute and actually win this market and win this industry. Uh we are in the it feels like we're now in the arena and we're one of the players and not just the spectator, and that's a huge difference.

SPEAKER_00 41:02

I can imagine too. I mean, uh, because you know, being an entrepreneur every day is like, okay, we got it, we get this barrier, we got this, whatever, whatever. And then every once in a while it's good to stop and go, wait a second, we we just we just hit a milestone of a hundred million dollars. So you like so you have to sometimes, it's always so easy to be go like, okay, what's the next problem to solve? And just to stop for a second and go, oh, let's let's celebrate this because it's like you're in rare, you're in rare territory. I I mean, you know, uh there's not very many companies that can it can have a hundred million dollar ARR. Like it's just not it's rare. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:39

Can you speak a little bit to what's driving this pace of growth? Like what do you feel is helping you this success?

SPEAKER_02 41:45

We got product market fit, which is cool. Yes, that's awesome. And we have a great go-to-market team, which I think drives a big part of the success for sure. But there is this big need. People and companies are tired of trying to figure out and piecing things together of where my shipment is. And they say, you know what? There's a tracker. Oh my God, okay. I can just take this, press the button, put it on the shipment, and here we go. I get to know exactly where my shipment is, and I don't have to rely on anyone because it's my shipment, it's my data, and I get to now build workflows and AI agents, and um, I get to make my supply chain more efficient without relying on anyone else. And what's really driving it is this automation is becoming bigger. Uh the uh I think with artificial intelligence, the the this flywheel is gonna get even faster, and more people are gonna want more real-time data so that there's no the there's no questions about the data because AI needs to make a quick decision in order to make decisions what's the best data it can get at the most real-time, like most timely manner. Um and I think that's part of it that's driving it. And then our scale, just I think scale begets scale, and people start to rely more and more on Tive. Um and I think what's gonna happen, our cost of hopefully trackers is gonna go down in the next year, two years, three years, four years. So people are gonna put in more shipments. It's I but if I had to boil it down, really people just want to know where their stuff is and they don't want to question it. And how do I do it in the quickest way? I just take a tracker, put in the shipment, and I got the answer.

SPEAKER_00 43:31

Can I so something that maybe our audience know, well, may not know about your product, though, is you're not just tracking GPS, you're tracking a lot of different things. Can you talk a little about all the the things you track that are valuable? Especially, I was thinking about can know a little bit about this, but like the food industry and not with the location, correct.

SPEAKER_02 43:47

This has a temperature sensor, so we get to tell whether berries, whether uh fruits, vegetables, poultry, uh depending on the temperatures being shipped at, it has a light sensor right here. So Somebody opens up a trailer, we can detect that somebody potentially is tampering with the goods. It has a humidity sensor, so we can detect moisture. We can detect the orientation of the shipment. So if it's upside down or somebody tilted it, uh, there's a shock sensor here if it's sensitive materials that we're tracking. We're able to tell if there were shock events and where and who did it. Um and then we also have this seal that you can actually attach into the trailer. So usually you place a plastic seal or a metallic seal, but those are you cut them and nobody knows what happened. This is Bluetooth, it connects with the tracker. This is inside, this is outside. And the moment somebody cuts this, this alerts the user that hey, somebody's tampering potentially with your trailer or your container. Um, so yeah, absolutely, it's way more than GPS. And then you have a software layer on top of that where customers can set up geofences, set up route deviation alerts, set up thresholds, alerts, monitoring, workflows, like it just makes things more efficient for them on day-to-day compare to make a call, figure out where the shipment is, get an email, lock to some platform to see where one truck is, another platform to see where the other truck is. Yeah, it's a lot more.

SPEAKER_00 45:23

I mean, so if I if I were for the food part of it, I mean I really appreciate this as a consumer because there's less you there's less waste. If there's accountability for the shipment, and you say, listen, then somebody says, Oh, these barriers are value, like why? And like, and then somebody says, Oh, these are being tracked, like they might they might actually behave differently. Like, I want to make sure this gets from A to B. I'm accountable for this. There, they're I know they're watching, I'm not just leaving, you know, leaving the door open and letting it get hot and stuff like that. So that's I think that that's uh probably I would think a positive thing for the industry in general. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:57

Is there anything um you're excited about that's coming next for Tive?

SPEAKER_02 46:03

Oh, um a lot. I'm I'm excited about this product here, which is the Solo Pro, uh, which is pharma specific. We have a screen and customer, and especially on the pharma side, just what they need to do is they need to know exactly do I have to quarantine this product or can I administer it to the patients? And they don't have time to log into a platform, see if the data's there. They just need to make a decision right there and then. Uh, and this this is going to more massive scale, I would say, in the next three months. Uh, I'm very excited about this product to be able to serve the pharma market. And then um there's a lot of cool things on the software, a lot of cool things on the hardware side, but one cool one on software. So if you look at a reefer, which is a refrigerated trailer, and you've seen trailers in the road, but refrigerated means there's like a unit that it's blowing air and making it whatever temperature you want it to be inside. Sometimes you, as a customer, you tell the shipping carrier company, the trucking company, hey, I want this to be running at 32 Fahrenheit continuous. But in order for them to save money, sometimes in cross-border, sometimes in other areas, they might turn it on and off, on and off. Like it goes to 40, 32, 40, 32, or they run it in a cyclical manner instead of continuous. They might save 50, 100, $150, but that's margin for them. But what we've developed is an algorithm uh that with machine learning that looked at all the shipments that we've done, but to be able to detect if the reefer is running on a continuous manner or a non-continuous manner. And now we can set an alert to the customer and then can say, hey, call the carrier, tell the carrier, hey, I'm paying you for continuous. Why are you not running? And I think that's gonna save more. Let me it's gonna increase shelf life of products when it comes to produce and fruits and vegetables, is gonna um it's just gonna make things better. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:09

Well, that's very exciting. No, I I love that as a consumer. I love the idea, like Brian said, of of there being um tools like this that companies will be able to use to better uh make sure that the quality is controlled for for products for consumers. I'm sure over your career you've received a lot of advice. I'm curious if there's one piece of advice that kind of stands out to you that has really helped drive you throughout your career path.

SPEAKER_02 48:38

Uh, I think maybe I already answered that, which I would have answered is what what um Brian uh I mentioned uh and just on with the bitwave. Don't don't wait for somebody to give you permission.

SPEAKER_01 48:53

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 48:54

Don't wait for the right time. Uh if there's something that needs to be done, a job needs to be done, and you're the one you can actually go and do it and uh see the results, just go ahead. Uh, I don't think anybody out there is uh gonna lay a red carpet for you to do something. Uh just it's um just go and do it. Just do it like Nike, I guess. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:24

No, Brian, before I ask our last question, I want to give you an opportunity if there's anything else you wanted to ask.

SPEAKER_00 49:30

No, uh well, the only thing I'm I don't want to ask, but we have since we have a similar uh interaction with with with uh like Bitwave, I will say that um Russ and Jeff, who were two of the co-founders of of Bitwave, they were they were actually an inspiration to me too as far as entrepreneurship, right? I think uh they they they worked pretty well as and they still work together, you know, in at a company. So um so you had some, I think you had a basic with Jeff, I think you had a good initial mentor, right? Uh and so you know if they're listening to this, hats off to both you guys, Russ and Jeff.

SPEAKER_02 50:04

Yeah, absolutely. I learned a lot about marketing from Russ too. So he was uh he was the CMO, Jeff was the CTO. And we're I mean, I was very lucky to to join. I was 21 years old, so it was a good experience back then.

SPEAKER_01 50:24

Amazing. So we like to ask a final question of guests, um, and that is can you tell us something interesting that people may be surprised to learn about you?

SPEAKER_02 50:35

Um, I used to be a goalkeeper, and uh I decided not to do goalkeeping, and then a year ago, two years ago, decided to do more goalkeep. After many, many years. I haven't done goalkeeping. I'm like, let me go and join a team in Arlington here. And I wrote my Keely's tendon a year ago. Thanks God, everything's good now. I'm walking, I'm running, uh, but that's something interesting. Don't and I did it four days or five days before Jason Tatum.

SPEAKER_00 51:06

Wow. Wow. Well, yeah, you don't mind people with uh shoot uh kicking balls at you at you know 80 miles an hour or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 51:14

And you know that's a high pressure position.

SPEAKER_00 51:18

I love it. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 51:21

Wow, that's that's great. I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 51:25

Yeah, Kernar. Yeah, and for for listeners who want to learn more about Tive and follow your journey, where where would you recommend that they go?

SPEAKER_02 51:33

They can reach out to me on LinkedIn, but also just go to Tive.com. T-I-V-E.

SPEAKER_01 51:39

All right. I will link both of those in the show notes for any listeners or viewers. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe and visit iuvotech.com for more conversations exploring leadership, culture, and technology at the edge of innovation.

SPEAKER_00 51:52

Yeah, and Kernar Story is a great reminder that great founders don't always start out planning to be founders, they start out being curious. As a matter of fact, you talked about the why and having an important why of things too, and about solving hard problems and willing to keep learning along the way. Thanks for listening, and until next time, stay curious.

SPEAKER_01 52:12

Thank you for tuning in to the Edge of Excellence. We hope today's insights empower you to shape your future and rise to your full potential. Let's continue to grow, innovate, and lead, pushing the boundaries of excellence.