Entrepreneurs get inside look at starting high tech businesses
Bob Moore, a leader in Philadelphia’s high tech startup community, visited West Chester University to share his story
When Bob Moore gives a presentation on his life as an entrepreneur, he breaks his talk up into a number of phases.
Each one is introduced with the phrase, “Be bad at,” as in “Be bad at poker,” “Be bad at sales,” and “Be bad at two things at once.”
Moore, however, isn’t bad at telling other wouldbe entrepreneurs about the ups and downs of starting and running a high tech company in the Philadelphia area, and on Tuesday around 80 people showed up at West Chester University to hear his story.
Moore, currently the head of Magento Business Intelligence, is best known in the Philadelphia high tech community for being the co-founder of RJMetrics, a data analytics software startup.
That company, which he founded with Jake Stein in 2009, was bought out by Silicon Valley-based Magento in August of 2016. One line of RJMetrics products was spun off into a company called Stitch, which Stein runs and where Moore is chairman of the board.
Moore’s love for analytic software started in earnest when he was a college student at Princeton. He attended college during the peak of the online poker craze, he recalled. He developed software that allowed players to quickly figure out the odds of winning hands. Each time someone clicked on his link, he received a payment.
By the time the online poker market dried up, he had earned enough to pay off his college tuition.
The experience ended for Moore when his software was used as the basis for the Texas Hold’em Calculator and the company that made it, Sharper Image, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection (it has since emerged). At the same time, regulators began to crack down on online poker sites, Moore recalled.
“Poker was done,” he said of his first experience at being an entrepreneur.
Moore came out of the experience with two strong beliefs.
“This is what made me hate hardware,” he said of the first insight.
It also reinforced in him the value of writing good software. Do it once and it pays off many times over, he observed.
After a short stint in sales, Moore and Stein decided to start their own company.
The date was easy to recall, Moore said, because the next day, Sept. 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers collapsed. And the start of what would become The Great Recession was on.
“The next three years were the driest times in venture capital history,” he said.
The partners, in New York at the time, decided to preserve cash and moved back to the Philadelphia area to set up shop in Camden, New Jersey. Persevering, RJ Metrics grew to $1 million in revenues by December 2011 and employed 11 people.
The company continued to grow, reaching close to 200 employees but the company had tough times as well, the entrepreneur related. At one point, a downturn forced it to lay off 25 employees, or about 20 percent of the workforce.
Moore said one of the things he was most proud of was that RJMetrics helped almost all of its laid off employees find new positions at young high tech companies in Philadelphia – something that couldn’t have been done a few years earlier because there weren’t enough such companies in the city.
The president of the Philly Startup Leaders, a support organization that encourages high tech innovation in Philadelphia, Moore added that having a partner was crucial during the startup phase of RJMetrics.
“My most valuable resource was Jake Stein, the co-founder,” Moore said. “We relied on each other. We gut-checked each other.”
Moore also urged those in the audience starting their own business to listen closely to their customers.
“For the first couple of years in Camden, our cus-
tomers were out best resources,” he said. “Looking back, we should have visited them more.”
Tuesday’s event was held at WCU’s Foundation building on Carter Drive and was sponsored by the Ideas x Innovation Network, or i2n, Liberty Valley Meetup Initiative, the university and WSFS.
The evening gave entrepreneurs the chance to network with one another before and after Moore’s presentation.
Over 20 startup companies, including some new faces, were among the participants, said Nancy Kunkle, i2n project director.
Represented were area emerging technology startups such as Brandywine Photonics, Curotec, GarageLabs; and new startups like iGRID and NicMarie.
Those that serve new and emerging companies with office space, coaching and advice, and investing were also in attendance, as was state Rep. Warren E. Kampf, R-157th, and Gary Smith, CEO of the Chester County Economic Development Council.
Kunkle said there will be more events coming like last week’s.
“We held this summer meetup to bring the Philly and the burbs’ startup communities together as a way to foster entrepreneurial growth in the region,” she said. “The partnership with Liberty Valley Initiative and CCEDC/i2n will be ongoing with other ‘meet ups’ that will provide a regular opportunity for entrepreneurs to network and share much needed industry connections.
“It also enables us to build and expand the ecosystem of resources around innovation in not only Chester County but throughout the suburbs,” Kunkle said.