Rob Mathewson
Programs: Advisory Solutions & Labs Coach - Community mentor, NSF I-Corps
Industry experience
- Software
- SaaS
- PaaS
- Engineered Materials
- Manufacturing
- AI/ML applications
- Consumer Goods
- Retail Solutions
- Workflow Products
- B2B and B2C products and services
Areas of expertise
- Sales
- Team formation
- Product and market strategies
Background
Rob is a serial entrepreneur with experience in a broad array of industries including Artificial Intelligence, SaaS/PaaS and Cloud Computing, Enterprise Software, Construction, Manufacturing, Consumer Goods, and Retail.
Working with CoMotion
Mentor journey
I have been mentoring teams since the early days of CoMotion, going back to 2015. There’s no substitute for the energy that exists during the formative stages of a new company. It’s a thrill for me to participate, add value, and watch teams succeed and grow. I think it’s vitally important to deliver straight, unvarnished truths to founders. From experience, I know founders are surrounded by those offering opinions, but often those opinions are not in a company’s best interest. As a founder, I often found myself saying “why didn’t someone tell me that sooner?” Hopefully, I can provide value as a mentor that saves a young company from making an early costly mistake.
Favorite project
During the formative months of Membrion, I worked with founder Greg Newbloom to develop his early Lean Canvas for a business that was substantially different than what it is today. However, in the true spirit of Lean Startups, we put the company in a position to recognize a new market opportunity and pivot towards success.
Advice to innovators
Never fall in love with your idea. Instead, fall in love with your customers and listen to their pain.
On the lighter side
Fun anecdote
When I founded Geedra, a SaaS for managing construction photos, it was 2012 and we had designed our entire product around a use case that involved digital cameras and laptops. Just prior to launch, the latest iPhone was released and totally changed the user paradigm. We scraped together our last $10K to build an app, but ultimately ran out of funds before we could get market adoption.