Building a Virtual Company to $20 Million: Rob Cheng, CEO of PC Pitstop (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Were you hiring these developers in South Carolina?

Rob Cheng: We used Monster.com. Back then, that was a way to hire people. So I would just look for the best people and for the skill. I would find them wherever I could. As it ends up, a couple of our developers ended up in South Carolina. But that was much more by luck than by design.

Sramana Mitra: You were okay with doing this work-at-home situation? You would hire wherever basically. How many did you hire?

Rob Cheng: Yes. In 2005, I would say we now have 10 people.

Sramana Mitra: 10 people and you’re going at $5 million in revenue. That’s terrific.

Rob Cheng: In that period of time, we made a lot of money. As far as you looked at the productivity and the statistics, we weren’t that big but we were very profitable. We had made a lot of software products.

By 2009, we had five different products that we’re selling. One was an anti-virus, a PC maintenance, updates, and drivers. Then, I decided to make one product that did everything. That’s what we call PC Matic.

Another interesting thing that happened in 2007 was I am very technical because of my engineering degree. I started writing computer code. Back then, they would just let me handle the business and stuff, but I said, “I’m going to jump in here and start writing some code.”

In 2007, I taught myself how to write a bunch of code. We’re still using a lot of our code from 2007 to 2013. That gave me the confidence to say, “I believe that we have the skills to make this.” This wasn’t an easy project to consolidate all of our code into one. That was a really big success.

We also did another thing to change the future of the company. We started advertising on television. In 2009, we did two really big things. We created this brand new product that handled everything. The price point is the same as now: $50 for five computers for one year. We wanted to be really affordable.

Then, we advertised on television. In 2010, PC Matic was a runaway success. Both my wife and my father, in the space of three months, got infected. We were licensing a third-party anti-virus and it was from our partner. It was Computer Associates.

I looked around and said, “Can I get a better one?” I realized that they were all flawed. They were all based on this blacklist. This blacklist has this flaw that if it hasn’t seen a virus before, it assumes it to be good and lets them run. That’s how my wife and dad got infected. I said, “We should make our own anti-virus.”

In 2011, we made our own anti-virus. At that time, it’s the only worthy anti-virus that’s made in the United States. I didn’t realize those things at the time, but that’s what happened. We made it and then we rolled it out to all of our customers.

Sramana Mitra: So was AVG and the Czechoslovakian companies already there in the market at that point?

Rob Cheng: Absolutely. There’s a lot of different anti-viruses online. As you say, they’re all made outside the United States. They were all there too. They’re all based on a blacklist. So their customers are getting infected. I wanted to create a product so our customers wouldn’t get infected.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Building a Virtual Company to $20 Million: Rob Cheng, CEO of PC Pitstop
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