bcbusiness.ca april 2014 BCBusiness 63
How do you find the right people?
If: In the early years the challenge was finding
that right person to take a risk on the company.
Recruiting our first sales representative, our first
marketing employee, and finding those people
when you're a small company trying to make
ends meet is challenging. Now it's more about
how do we make all the teams at Mobify work
well together: the product team, the sales and
marketing teams, the customer success teams.
How do we all work toward one vision and in
the same direction and not focus too much on
individual parts? It's also about finding the right
people for certain roles; Vancouver is amazing
for engineering and design talent, but as a small
market we don't have any sales executives for
running technology companies.
Do you have any advice for young entrepreneurs
looking to start a business with a co-founder?
If: I think for us, it helped that we'd known each
other for a while. There are so many risks in a
startup: product risks, market risk, financial risk.
If you could take out the risk of having the right
people on board for the first year, I think that
makes things easier.
JB: Running a successful business is a mara-
thon, not a sprint, and when you're choosing
your co-founders you have to find someone who
you're willing to go the distance with. The early
days are going to be hard; the later days are
going to be hard too, but you don't want anything
adding to those challenges. You want to make
sure that everybody is really involved in what
they're doing and clear as to what your goals are
as a company, whether you're aligned around an
exit or looking to build a lasting a business. When
those crucial decision times come, you can refer
back to that conversation. –J.P.
John Boxall
Chief Technology Officer,
Mobify Research and Development Inc.
Age: 29
John Boxall designed and built Mobify's core
platform, which brands such as Starbucks and
Lululemon have used to optimize their websites
for mobile communications. The device-friendly
platform has enabled more than $150 million
in e-commerce revenues to date. A cheerleader
for Vancouver's startup scene, Boxall mentors
budding technologists at
SFU and BCIT, and has
helped organize several successful web design
and web performance meet-up groups.
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