Bootstrap to $25 Million from Utah, Raise Money Later to Scale to $100 Million: John Pope, CEO of Jive (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

John and Jive have executed steadily over the last decade and have built a kick-ass company. Read on!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your personal journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

John Pope: That’s a good place to start because where we come from, how we’re raised, and the early environment really shapes the way that we look at things and determines what type of an entrepreneur we’re going to be. I am from the Tacoma, Washington area. My family moved around a bit. I was the oldest child.

Early on, my parents split up. At a very young age, I remember watching my mother trying to make ends meet as my dad was not around. She was a bit of an entrepreneur. She had a clothing shop in Portland, Oregon when I was very young.

Very early on, I remember thinking, “I don’t like what my mother is having to go through. I don’t like that we sometimes don’t have enough money to make ends meet. I never want money to be a problem.” At an early age, I gravitated towards wanting more control in my life so that I can avoid some of the difficulties that our family went through. I grew up with my stepfather owning businesses and my mother having small businesses. It was all around me. That’s all I knew.

I didn’t know the nine-to-five life. I just saw them building businesses and keeping expenses in order. I enjoyed it early on. I was always trying to come up with ways to make money on my own at school. I would look for things to sell wherever I could.

Sramana Mitra: It’s a very common case that we hear from entrepreneurs. My own story is exactly the same. I grew up in an entrepreneurial family. My father was running a shipping company. It was ingrained. That was the dynamic or rhythm of life for me because that’s what I saw. Entrepreneurs, very often, come from entrepreneurial families. What did you do for college or education?

John Pope: I did not get really good grades in grade school and junior high. I was bored. I did well on tests, but I didn’t do my homework. It wasn’t my thing. One day, I was walking down the hall and saw an early college entrance exam. It was a total coincidence.

I decided to just walk in and see how I would do. I passed it and was able to get to Washington State. I went into the community college and got my Associate’s degree and went into student government. That was a big event in my life. It allowed me to get more serious and be more challenged. That’s how college started for me. I went on a volunteer mission to Jamaica for a couple of years. I came back and attended BYU in Utah. I was in the entrepreneurial program.

The interesting piece from that chapter is that there was a lecture series about 13 years ago. Entrepreneurs would come in and tell us how they succeeded and all of the pitfalls along the way. It was extremely inspiring to me. I think it’s very fashionable to be an entrepreneur right now. Fifteen years ago, it was cool but it didn’t have nearly the coverage that it has now.

Sramana Mitra: Glamor.

John Pope: Right. I wouldn’t make it all the way through school without really knowing that being an entrepreneur was an option. Back then, I had gone three and a half years before I realized I had the disposition to be an entrepreneur. When I saw these entrepreneurs come in and talk about their experiences, I was completely inspired. I thought, “That’s me!” I quit school with two classes left and started a company during the summer.

We did door-to-door sales for satellite TV. We gradually moved into doing installations. I was hooked at that point. About 10 months later, I started another business – an insurance business – and hired several people out of the gate. I was up and running. I started to get into niche marketing with different ethnic groups in the insurance business. I was just on cloud nine. It  was incredible, over those two years, to discover who I was supposed to be in life and to start having fun with it and just start having success with it. I credit that lecture series which, I believe, is the same type of value that you’re bringing here.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Bootstrap to $25 Million from Utah, Raise Money Later to Scale to $100 Million: John Pope, CEO of Jive
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