Member News

March 03, 2018

This week I became personally acquainted with an entrepreneur I’ve known by reputation for a very long time. Tyrone F. Pike, of Woodside, California, has founded and led more than 10 companies in his 35 year (and counting) career since the launch of his first company, LAN Systems, in 1983.

Some have made more money than others. His journey has included self-funded launches (such as his current company, FileShadow) as well as venture-funded startups, sojourns in some of the largest companies (Intel, Citrix, Ungermann-Bass) and even a few IPOs.

In all, he has found several consistent paths to success.

His biggest secret: You don’t have to outrun the “big dogs”—- Google, Microsoft, Intel, Citrix, Ungermann-Bass, EMC—- to succeed. Nor do you have to run scared of the giants snuffing you out. Instead, find ways to help their technologies work better. Now you become an ally and partner (and potentially an acquisition target as well).

In the case of Pike’s first company, LAN Systems (a New York-based integrator), technologies such as the LANSpool print server and other utilities began as value-add product opportunities for its customers. In time, the strategy made LAN Systems a threat to other integrators (who avoided the products for fear of losing integration accounts), but made the products group an attractive acquisition to Intel, who used the purchase to jump start its entry into the networking realm.

Next, following a stint at the helm of the new division in Intel, came SwitchSoft, building software for Microsoft, EMC, Computer Associates and HP. The result: SwitchSoft evolved into VPNX.com (virtual private network partitions) and was acquired in 2000 by Internap, a data service provider that later went public and reached $335M by 2014.

Then came Cemaphore, with a line of storage products that ultimately became Solid Instance after mergers in and out of other technology firms. Pike bought the technology back, improved it, and later sold it to Citrix.

Pike’s biggest lessons for other entrepreneurs:

• There is no such thing as a once in a lifetime opportunity or idea. If you pay attention to the functions others are missing, you’ll see chances to fill those holes and succeed every day.
• Likewise, there is no such thing as an overnight success, even when you’re using a model and formula you’ve succeeded with in prior organizations before.
• While small and nimble, using a known formula, is Pike’s favorite path, he is quick to note that large organizations have advantages, too—in particular, he acknowledges companies with strong legal departments for obtaining and protecting IP, and strong HR departments to protect and develop the company’s people. These are traits he admires and has emulated in his own smaller ventures.
• There is power in making a modest investment, but having a technological advantage, he says. In most cases, if you defer taking revenue until you can land your ideal customers, it prevents you from chasing “stupid money or stupid transactions” (although he admits to having taken on less-than-ideal customers in a few cases purely to meet the need for operating cash, when required).

Interestingly, Pike’s value-add formula has also contributed to public relations success. He recalls the time an eWeek reporter (Clint Boulton) stopped an interview cold with the question “So you’re telling me this will make it possible for Gmail and Outlook to integrate with each other?” Yes. He was. The story made eWeek’s front page.

It was the ability of Cemaphore to make the battle between Google and Microsoft a non-issue by bridging the environments together that compelled tech reporter Miguel Helft to cover the company in the New York Times.

Today Pike is using his favorite formula again in FileShadow. FileShadow is an app that makes it possible to find personal or business files instantly on any of the cloud platforms, and then archives them (creating a saved file for every revised version), making the online files immediately findable and protected (via the IBM Cloud) for the rest of your life. In this case, the competing monoliths are no longer just Microsoft and Google but involve the reigning storage services such as DropBox, Box, Google Drive, One Drive Personal and Business and Adobe Creative Cloud. (As a future development, Pike sees the protection of stored online assets becoming a part of home and business insurance policies as well.)

FileShadow doesn’t replace or compete with other storage services. Instead, the added usability and protection it provides for other services makes the company a friend to them all.

This is an opportunity so big that Pike, now in his early 60s, believes it is the last company he will head as a CEO. But when a formula is working, time will tell. It will be interesting to watch his newest venture progress.