How NOT To Build a Startup: Ned Hill, CEO of Position Imaging (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What did you do after college?

Ned Hill: I had a painting company while in college. That was successful and there was a person who heard about me and recruited me to help them figure out how to clean shoes. This is a crazy story. They had these huge crates of shoes that had mildew all over them. They recruited me to see if I can figure it out.

I figured out a process to clean these shoes very rapidly. I rented, for short term, a warehouse in Hyde Park and created a cleaning line. By the end of the month, we cleaned close to a 100,000 shoes and made about $100,000. We were getting a dollar a shoe. This was a pop-up shoe cleaning business. That was one of my first entrepreneurial gigs. I made some money on that.

I also started a company when I got out of school. I hooked up with some guys from Ratheon. We developed a new radio tracking technology that we licensed. That was right before I started Position Imaging. The lesson Iearned from that was a couple of things. I was not into this for a small splash. I’m in this to make a dent in the universe as Steve Jobs would say.

The limiter of the technology that I created was that it was point-to-point range detection. It didn’t have a lot of reach. Positioning had a lot of reach. I left that company to start Position Imaging with a focus on creating a base of technology that could be a moat around our products that could enable new ways of doing things that nobody had ever conceived of.

Sramana Mitra: When you say we developed, you were not technical though. Can you double-click down?

Ned Hill: I did a lot of research on radio frequency characteristics. I did come up with an approach for this ranged detection. It was using phase angularity in a two-way path. I did come up with that. Then I had to hunt for some guys and convince them that this approach could be the most accurate point-to-point range detection in the world using radio tracking. I had to hustle these two older gentlemen. It took us about a year to develop that. That was done without funding.

Sramana Mitra: That’s really interesting. When I hear stories of non-technical entrepreneurs doing tech ventures, mostly they are playing more of the business role. They partner with somebody who has the technical chops. It looks like you did the development yourself. You clearly have a technical bent.

Ned Hill: That’s right. Now I have over 50 patents myself. That was a discovery for me.

Sramana Mitra: The other thing that I always find inspiring is the capacity for rigor. You can learn a lot of things if you have the capacity for rigor. Learning complex things is a very rigorous process.

Ned Hill: And you also have to have the confidence that you can learn it because it’s intimidating. You got to have the faith in yourself. Most people can learn the basics. There’s a lesson that an investor gave to me. The guy was brutal. I was in a restaurant. He said, “What do you need the money for?” I said I needed an office and hire a few engineers. He put his hand up and looked me square in the eye, leaned forward and said, “You’re not raising enough for a salary.”

He taught me a ton. One of the things he told me is, “You cannot take anything in your company for granted. You have to know everything.”

This segment is part 2 in the series : How NOT To Build a Startup: Ned Hill, CEO of Position Imaging
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