Meeting with H.P., founder and CEO of Telenav

I visited H.P. Lin, CEO and founder of TeleNav, Stanford PhD and McKinsey&Co alumni. He seemed a very honest leader.

TeleNav provides location-based services (tracking, dispatching and navigation). TeleNav was the first to launch a GPS solution on the mobile phone in North America. They use GPS and cell-ID for indoors. They currently have partnerships with 80% of US carriers (carriers want to control the application and the billing) and it is the most preloaded navigation system on mobile phones.

The company was founded in 1999. The opportunity was that a mobile has its own position using GPS and it can have much more info about the location because it is connected to the base station (updated information related to the location, e.g., see in the map updated information of the movies played in the cinema next to you or even buy a ticket). They do not believe in advertising but subscription model. According to Deloitte, it is the fastest growing company in the Valley.

During the meeting we also talked about entrepreneurship and the story behind Telenav:

• They launched in 1999, which was too early for location based services. They went from 50 employees to 20. Now they are ~350.
• After the bubble, they had a 100% pay cut. But the core team stayed (9 out of 10 people, and the person that left was because he had a family to feed). They were very open about the financial situation.
• In bad times (post bubble), you need to believe and be persistent. If you survive you learn a lot.
• They find difficult go sell to the car industry because it has very long sales cycles.
• When raising money from friends and family, do not do it if they do not have enough money. Only very wealthy individuals.
• For them Android is not a threat but another platform.
• In a startup you cannot do bottom up innovation (~chaotic) like in Google. You need a top down innovation strategy.