How NOT To Build a Startup: Ned Hill, CEO of Position Imaging (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: This first company, how long did you do it for?

Ned Hill: It was five years. I was doing that part-time.

Sramana Mitra: You had another job?

Ned Hill: I was doing inside sales. I did that because I needed to get better at sales.

Sramana Mitra: In this program, we call that Bootstrapping with a Paycheck.

Ned Hill: I did that to improve my sales.

Sramana Mitra: How far did this side gig go?

Ned Hill: I left the company because I wanted to develop a position tracking platform. I felt like it was too exposed and limited. I got into a debate with my Invisible Fence board at that time. They didn’t want to fund the new development and they put some clamps around the company that wouldn’t allow me to fund a new platform. I just left the company. What I had in my mind’s eye was going to be much bigger.

Sramana Mitra: So did this have investors?

Ned Hill: That was called Secure Technologies. We licensed the technology and then we went on to start Position Imaging.

Sramana Mitra: I’m a little bit confused. You were bootstrapping Invisible Imaging?

Ned Hill: That was called Secure Technologies. That company licensed the technology to Invisible Fence for dogs. We had the core technology for ranging.

Sramana Mitra: Which one had investment?

Ned Hill: Secure Technologies. I eventually brought on investors.

Sramana Mitra: Where exactly is this going? Which company becomes Position Imaging?

Ned Hill: Position Imaging was a new company that I started after Secure Technologies. After I left Secure, I knew what I wanted to accomplish technically, but I needed a team to help me with that. It was bootstrapped until we got things working.

Sramana Mitra: Position Imaging had nothing to do with either of those two previous companies?

Ned Hill: Other than the fact that it gave me an education in radio tracking.

Sramana Mitra: You got a lot of education. You learned sales. You got a lot of technical education. That’s invaluable. Since you were going to bootstrap again, were you coming out of these experiences with any money?

Ned Hill: No, we didn’t make substantial money. Secure Technologies was set up to become a lifestyle company. A couple of the investors who were in Secure Technologies funded Position Imaging.

Sramana Mitra: When you were starting Position Imaging, your previous investors were ready to fund you?

Ned Hill: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: What year are we at now?

Ned Hill: That was about 2005.

Sramana Mitra: How much money were your investors giving you?

Ned Hill: A few hundred thousand dollars. One of the things that I’ve become comfortable with is that my lead investor has a saying, “Eat what you kill.” Unless I’m delivering, I’m not going to get his cash. We had the same sort of modality with the early stages of positioning.

The tricky part was, there was so much technology if we were to create this wireless tracking technology platform. It was really important that we took however long it took. It took us 10 years to develop this advanced tracking technology. First, radio, then it segued into AI/computer vision.

This segment is part 3 in the series : How NOT To Build a Startup: Ned Hill, CEO of Position Imaging
1 2 3 4 5 6 7