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What you’ll hear in this episode:

• About Mutual Mobile
• Following your passion at a young age
• John Arrow’s advice to Masters & Founders

John Arrow began his innovator and entrepreneur career at the age of 22. He describes himself as someone who has always had an entrepreneurial spirit. He was one of those kids who was always trying to sell something to the neighbors whether it was a knick-knack or lemonade. He even tried to sell his neighbor their own plants once. Growing up amidst the dot com boom only fueled his spirit further. By the time he was in college and mobile became the hot new thing, he knew it was going to change the world; he needed to create a sustainable company to capitalize on it. He and a few of his peers at The University of Texas founded Mutual Mobile to do just that.

Mutual Mobile is an emerging technologies company that figures out how to help Fortune 1,000 companies generate more revenue or help them save on costs. Mutual Mobile’s first project was in 2009. They created one of the first 100 iPhone applications called Hang Time that measured how high you threw your phone and placed you on a leaderboard. Apple eventually removed it from the App Store due to safety risks involved with it, and it was named the second dumbest iPhone app of all time. Yet, Mutual Mobile’s legacy doesn’t stop there. They’ve since made an FDA-approved software to decrease medical errors in health care. They’ve also worked with Google to create their internal applications like Google Wallet and Under Armour to create their app Map My Fitness.

People think San Fransisco is the place to be if you’re a startup, but John disagrees. He loves being in Austin because of the community in the city. He praises the community for its collaboration and people willing to help people.

To hear more from John about Mutual Mobile, his story, and what’s next for him, tune into the thirteenth installment of the entrepreneur podcast Masters& Founders. If you enjoy the episode then be sure to share it with friends and colleagues!

Masters & Founders is a founding_media podcast created in collaboration with foundingAUSTIN.

Host: Dan Dillard

Guest: John Arrow

 

Transcript:

welcome back to masters and founders I’m excited to share this week’s episode with you all I have the opportunity to chat with John Errol co founder of mutual mobile John is constantly thinking of ways to improve business and innovate industries in his company at just twenty two years of age John is taken as young entrepreneurial spirit to unbelievable heights John is someone who can see a gap in the market and make something happen let’s jump right in and hero jungle to start and where he wants to go in the future

I’m here with John Erro from mutual mobile I’m really excited about this conversation thanks for being with us Dan really happy joining us come by our office I love this place I was just telling you how wonderful and beautiful this is so those that can’t see it we do have it the video on masters and founders Facebook group so you watch this but we have we’re sitting in front of a beautiful day right almost close to street park as you’ll hear some so a little bit of road noise but it’s beautiful

I am excited about this we have had a couple conversations and relax and but your story what we can share with the audience about how your your your pass and what you’ve done so would you tell the audience is to start with little bit about mutual mobile and and and then we’ll jump into your store stuff sounds great again really happened join listen to the other podcasts and happy to be a part of this so mutual mobile is essentially an emerging technologies company it figures out how to help the fortune one thousand generate either more revenue or save save costs we focus on really high stakes problems we work with Google we work with Ford we work with Nike on bringing in technology like mobile virtual reality for internet of things and doing something amazing with it we have about two hundred people right now and and they’re some of the brightest in the industry as relates to merging technology

really cool hello how old the speech among coming up on our ten year anniversary since or nine but didn’t next able be ten congratulations thank you so let’s go back to the beginning let’s go back to becoming the founder has you know masters of fans all about people that masters of anyone’s got ten thousand hours of in their crown following their passion a founder someone started a company near one of both so let’s talk about that where the star for you

so it started at the university of Texas and I got the job the old fashioned way I was that I was the only person in the room at the time and so can start at the start the company by myself and and you know very quickly found some amazing co founders at the at the university we were all involved in aviation and I got my pilot’s license as a freshman at U. T. I met I met my co founders there and we we kicked it off it was something where in the early days of the company we’re splitting our time between classes and billing billing organization

well well so when did you know that you want to start a company is a leading Hollinger look I was gonna do this there’s no so I ordered a job thought process that’s a great question it’s something that so my earliest memories involved wanting to work for myself so growing up I was that I was that kid going door to door trying to sell different knick knacks and trying to in that time Austin hot summer selling lemonade on the street corners in the winter I would have a hot chocolate stand and so as early as I can remember I was kind of had this entrepreneurial streak in me and it’s funny I I it was one of those things that probably drove my parents a big crazy I have this vivid memory being eight or nine years old and we would always go and try to sell our neighbors are elderly neighbors whatever it was that day that we had thought of and they would always they were this super sweet nice couple and they were they would buy it from us one day I remember going door to door with my best friend and we have found these plants we lived on a green belt growing up and found these beautiful plants and we said surely they would like to buy them so we run the doorbell they both answered together I still remember this and they look at the plants and they just shook their heads no we don’t want to buy these plates and thought that was kind of strange so being an eighty eight year old we we went back to doing what we were doing before and start playing later that afternoon I hear my mom you know kind of kind of almost an anger earlier frustrated voice call me and say why did you dig up our neighbors plants and try to sell them back to them it’s I didn’t make that connection that they were their place but this is a recurring theme that early on I I realize that it was amazing when you can come up with an idea and and your self reliant on executing it and so I got involved in in the internet during the dot com boom I was eleven or twelve then but kind of realize what what you could do that and so we do different experiments and when mobile happen to realize it was going to be like the the dot com boom again but wanted to figure out how to build a sustainable company versus something that was just living in the limelight

and when that mobile happen with that you recall she was like right the thing I want to six exactly two thousand seven is when apple when Steve Jobs first announced the iPhone two thousand eight ships two thousand nine is when the apps store happen and so I have this vivid memory of sitting in a dorm room and then watching the recorded video of jobs and now it’s an I for realizing wow this is going to fundamentally change the way the world works a lot of people at that time realize this was going to be a significant device I think what made myself and my co founders really stand up and take notice is that we saw it as this inflection point that was asking if again as the TV or the internet or or the wheel that every the world is going to be different afterwards well

so you have that thought like this is going to change the world and on the record and that was that was really that was kind of really the catalyst was wow this is going to change the world I want to be a part of fostering that and figure out how we can accelerate that faster and in India we didn’t we didn’t know what we didn’t know what the time we just knew that while this is going to be incredible we wanted to be a part of it

what were you studying in school was in technology or Houston thanks I took a buffet of course is it you to switch my major many times I started as an economics major switch to advertising got some computer science in there as well and even some sociology I left one one eight one core shy of a degree I believe in sociology but I’m pretty sure my parents and I graduated so we’ll be able to hotel

so the tell me about the the people that you worked well before the meat of this on the questions in a moment start over your first up you’re talking about the others pretty fast but I love I love talking about this one it’s it’s funny though just take a step back the reason that I really want to start the company was it was a selfish reason I wanted to find other people that were passionate about that technology so we needed something for everybody to rally around and then going back to the first that we knew that the company wanted to build is going to be about time solving these high state problems we didn’t want to just throw software in the store and see what happens and the funny funny thing that we did as a first project together was this application call hang time and so hang time use the accelerometer in your phone to figure out how high you through your first iPhone and this was something that it it’s it’s ridiculous as it sounds the thing that made it even more ridiculous was we made a leader board so you can track to see who through their home phone the highest and now this was not some some amazing design feed this wasn’t this wasn’t really an engineering the reason that it was successful was because they were less than a hundred apps in the app store today there’s about two million apps in the store while we did it when they were about a hundred and there wasn’t much to buy and so if you got your fancy new iPhone from the apple store the person that you did was you browse the apps store he said what’s what’s is hang time and we sold it for ninety nine cents and before we knew it we had tens of thousands of people downloading it and using it and this leader board kept rising so we see it go from about a half second to to one point one seconds and you know the funny funny thing I like to it shows like I mean this I throw that I just did there in this room and then hit the ceiling but it was that was only about point for many point three seconds of the people that work throwing this they were they were getting into it and before we knew it we said okay this corner leveled out let’s go work on building a real company nobody nobody looks the scores nobody went back there it was it wasn’t until a couple months later we happen to check the leader board and there was a score for about I think was seventeen seconds or so and get in touch the guy asked him how he hacked their app because we want to fix it as I was telling you earlier the crazy thing about it was he said no I did Hackett I went skydiving and then as soon as he did that the name of the game became you know who could wait the longest open the parachute discourse kept rising apple pulled it from the store and rightly so he became teenagers it big game dangers and it wasn’t something that we wanted necessarily to be known for it was your intent it was never your intention it was just exactly which the fun thing was a great way for my co founders to get to know each other and that it was named the second dumbest iPhone app of all time by his motor which is one of the awards we don’t have up here at the office but we probably should display print

maybe we should the thing is I think I mean even more than the award even more than just kind of the the exposure notoriety right is it is it is it made us realize wow it’s thrilling create something on this new platform and have people immediately be able to access if you think about the traditional software distribution model you would have to go down to Best Buy or circuit city or to a cat in you would buy a piece of software you put the CD in your computer and you cross your fingers and hope that maybe it wouldn’t star I I I I’m that live in memory sure you do too of software being difficult to install you would never know if it would work and then even when you could download it on the internet it was the same thing they were so much different fragmentation and hardware you never knew it was going to work on your computer so it was a real pain with the distribution model that apple created it changed at all you could just know if I download this not only is it going to work not only is it going to do what it said it was going to do it’s also going to be probably be pretty good because pass the apple curation of editor so after we did hang time we started looking at what we’re we’re could significant software really make a difference in the world what we’re supposed talking about earlier is healthcare was the natural place that we started out we realized that in two thousand nine we started the company seven times more people are dying every year you to medical errors in car accidents it was just as mind boggling stat I didn’t have much exposure to health care but I realize Hey this is a significant problem I think mobile could probably addresses and so we looked we dove in kind of Arden beginner’s mind our nascent mindset and said how could the iPhone specifically fixes we realize that the incumbent problem was this paper and pen work flow where doctors nurses were writing down information and it was a lot of places for small details to get messed up in every so often somebody would get the wrong medication or an order of magnitude more medication would kill them

and it is so unfortunate thing in my mind so preventable too so we created this application we found a healthcare company want to partner with us on it and created something that took that paper and pen work flow and simply moved it over to the I thought since pre iPad so we launch this in some hospitals and kind of you know had our first firehose moment we’re learning about FDA approval and all that and we got it in the hospital before we knew it patients who were under the care of this app with their nurse or doctor there have been less medical errors it was a moment that wow okay this really works we might be on to something here and so not only that it help the help the company to help the healthcare company selling the product so that was the gravy and then we started looking at other high stakes probably went to education we figured out how can we keep kids in school who have literacy problems by creating text books on the iPhone the iPad how can we look at the financial services and figure out a way to you know make banking easier for people so we started looking at it with that same mindset help not not so much how can we necessarily drive revenue for our for our customer help them save money yes that’s important but how can we really solve some high state problem for users that previously technology hasn’t been able soft

really cool so now the question of some issues with some of the the the company had opportunity to work with we’ve had that’s one of my beyond number one is working with people I love our employees and getting the work we just people who know way more about emerging technology and IT that’s most thrilling thing a close second is getting to work with these amazing companies we work with the majority of the fortune five hundred on something and so the ones that yeah without any particular order I mean once it just come to mind most recently as we work with the founder of of uber early on in his company stumble upon bring them to the iPad and this is before over and we were talking to Gerry camp who was the original chairman and is still the chairman they’re getting access to those types of people and getting to listen to their ideas and I remember even hearing him talk about this last mile probably for over existed and so just thinking about where it was today and we had this is not something that was that unusually had this moment again and again

we got to work with with Google in two thousand ten when we had more mobile engineers at mutual mobile and Google day which seems absolutely insane but at the time you know kind of right place right lock and your desire to build something great we we were Google’s by under of choice I’m building a lot of their internal applications we built Google wallet we build Google butt cheeks we worked with them on a lot of high stakes problems one of the things that as amaze me the most about our country we got we have to work with Nike on this incredible application that United skaters around the world and build out this whole community this one time in our office we turned our office into a skate park and invited the local skating community in Austin and cause a bit of damages you have we learned a lot from it I’d say by far one of the most the most meaningful applications at that yet to me as we’ve gotten to work with with under armour we built map my fitness I want to get the murder with without my fitness on that and then they were acquired by under armour and if you look at this every day across the world over two hundred million people log in to use a piece of technology that we built and it’s instead of about you know throwing their iPhone in there this time it’s about going out and getting physical fitness and you realize that people who use this application day in and day out they live a healthier lifestyle yes it helps under armor sell more clothes but more importantly it gets them active and they share with their family and friends and it’s it’s hard to imagine kind of that the other positive externalities that occurred as a result of that

I was laughing with you because the first unintentional consequence of your first apple slice of maybe even lives in these are for the rest of the time it’s like you’ve created this real value for other companies and opens save lives and in some of the apps and that’s really really wonderful one of the things I want to touch on I think it’s super important is especially for audiences trying to build their own business and do their own thing how do you go many people think I gotta go build this this map I’m gonna go build this business planning to raise money images this path but yours was a little bit different you actually didn’t raise money

we did and it was something that was incredibly important to me I I grew up in Los I saw the trials and tribulations of the dot com boom and bust and I realized I want to make a company that’s profitable from day one and so there is a lot of temptation along the way to look at raising money for mutual mobile but I realized that if we had an investor early on we would be splitting our effort and and where we are focused between our investor and our customers and so we focused on letting our customers really be our investors and that meant that we built the company that the market really wanted it wasn’t always an easy thing to do I don’t think raising money is an easy thing to do either but it forced us to be a different type of company that a lot of our competitors and a lot of us I think actually grow quicker as a result

soon the process then in my room you can correct me from on prices then as you get a pre sell the idea of a concept to a company and solve the problem and then have them cut you a check to start working on it except that that’s exactly right I mean we we we every person that we hired we we were paying their salary no matter what and that continues to be so today so we need to figure out how we can build valuable things for our customers otherwise you know we’re not gonna keep growing as a business so that was always a challenge and it was this constant seesaw back and forth I think it was a healthy see saw where we would we would close a bunch of new customers we would close you know I don’t know then the next Google I’m I’m having a blank right now would close something with Xerox and then we have to go out and hire a lot of engineers and designers and then we would have those people and then we need to go sell something else and a lot of to kind of see some back and forth really really quickly and improve our skills and our process as a result of it it was tempting early on we had these unsolicited offers coming in no only one or two years and the company’s existence saying Hey we don’t need to see it act we don’t need you bitch were ready to investors a term sheet and flies you notify down Austin and they do the the winding indicting thing and laid out a term sheet and early on there were some pretty big numbers there for a company that was young and I am so thankful that we did not take that because it would have closed our options it would have required us to be a company that we didn’t want to be too soon to your heart and passion exactly

the way you want to build a hundred percent right that’s awesome I really love them I think it’s important to be honest no that just because there are multiple ways to make things work uhhuh no there’s not one or right way or another even just the way that fits right for you and for those other bootstrap and trying to figure things out I look at the process of saying whether you’re knocking on doors to get money to raise for your for your company or whether you’re knocking on customer stores and saying Hey trust will build this thing is still going to do the work Charlie and then build up that way so how big is mutual now as far as revenue NASA’s not custom just to give the audience an idea of what you mean show from scratch so we just about nine years old that we just celebrated our two hundred million dollar revenue so it’s something that were really passionate about it thank you it hasn’t always been that you know has always been up into the right jury there’s been just like with any company there’s been some that some dips and valleys along the way it is you know we’ve started to climb the business is growing rapidly right now we’re gonna have one of our best quarters that we’ve had in the last few years so one sided about that some amazing new customer starting under armor continues to be a great customer of ours so what I’m really really excited about for the company is we’re starting to see the next mall so every every few years it seems like it’s increasing the cadence of these we get some new piece of emerging technology that becomes a rocket ship not just for business but for human progress innovation and with virtual reality with augmented reality we’re seeing that happen again we finally got our ship date for the magic leap glasses they should be here soon so we’re anticipating a lot of work on that front and getting to kind of build out that what’s probably going to be bigger than all I’ll

I believe that I saw you room I’ll just turn would come and play with that please do yeah anytime you want anyone in Austin who once played with virtual reality technology come to mutual mobile would love to have you here I love you one thing I wanted to visit about or talk about to the audience is is failures because we talked about two and a four forty and you don’t see photos as fillers you see failures as well I think that they’re a great kind of ground troops right it’s very difficult I think when you’re building a company to get adequate ocal feedback it’s something didn’t work and so we see failure here as unequivocal proof we need to go different directions so whenever we have a failure internally mutual mobile whether it’s we didn’t win a new account or we didn’t hit the business objectives that we want to hit we do a post mortem it’s like when someone died but we do it on the opportunity and it’s this kind of you know take the emotion out of it and we say what happened and how can we learn from that how can we improve from that and so one of my kind of wishes as a community in Austin and just the startup ecosystem in general is we should talk about that more because there’s so many learnings from that he turned to crunch face or any of the news news publications and you always see the success stories about what it worked well and how everybody’s you know going good guns right just as fascinating probably more helpful to read about the times that it did it yes there’s a stigma associated I can understand why I think if we get past that will all be better as a result

I agree one hundred percent one of the things that as we were discussing purpose of the magazine is good bad ugly I want to I want to be able to bring out the good the bad and the ugly because all that’s education Carly every bit of that situation and failure to me is just education is that okay right up and the only way for anyone to grow is that change in that growth is like to run a bath hit your head against the wall okay well that wasn’t it let’s go the subway but in my experience my failures have always learned I’ve got so much value out of the phones that I just wouldn’t change a thing for the world because like that’s where you get the experience and knowledge in value

I do want to bring up your age just because I think that it’s important for the audience to understand that what you’ve been able to converse in such a short time and as if you haven’t done the math he started in two thousand seven you’re still a college college so start two thousand nine yeah that’s not your apps from students mark age thirty one you got it got mad I can’t I don’t agree that this early in the morning well if you does incredible things what what’s the future look like for you as it is used mutual mobiles the center you doing other things or what what do you think

so you know my philosophy always has been it’s important to to have a lot of irons in the fire right that it’s he is passionate as you can be about one thing which I am about mutual mobile I always have a different things going mutual mobile what’s really fascinating as it relates to kind of this new vector virtual reality augmented reality I think it’s the perfect the actor to go out and be the biggest company in that space to have the most kind of exciting opportunities so right now I’m heads down a hundred percent focused on mutual mobile but yeah I have a lot of other passion so I’m a I’m I’m I’m now the pilot I enjoy flying so I’m I’m I’m always make time about once a week to go fly somewhere to keep your skills sharp I’m looking at a lot of interesting opportunities and the basically economist drones basically carry passengers so that’s something one last name to me I love biotechnology and figuring out how we can eventually stop the aging process live forever I love the idea that I I think it’s it’s almost here that’s a good thing well I I wish I had I don’t know if I’ll have anything to do with it but I I hope with the part taken longer if we want to go grab a beer with you talk more about that please yes let’s do it

unions usually within its I think there’s been a wonderful education for them thank you well I would just say I feel like going back to what you were saying about kind of the failures and successes let’s talk about them let’s talk about the more let’s bring them to light and also one of the things that I appreciate about the city more than probably anyone else in the world is how excessive blood is if you go to San Francisco yes there’s a capital way more start ups way more interesting way more companies and that density space but they’re all pretty silent here in Austin everyone successful so would invite anyone who’s interested come image mobile planner V. our lab let us know if we can be helpful anyway that is part of the community of talk to so many people that also in a conversation with you we were talking about what name Austin one word and I said community I think that was us yeah nine that was such a yeah spot on yeah because it it it is exactly what else is about is just reaching out any help with the search will have coffee and everybody’s so open and I think there’s the growth and the energy and just creativity that happens and just being able to be that open is unstoppable my current remark

thank you so much for being with us this morning I really enjoy this look for to hear more about the things that you’re working on thank you very much take a it’s always important to talk about failure and success because that’s how we learn to grow not only as individuals but also with any business endeavor I’m so lucky to be here in Austin and get opportunities to reach out and talk to folks like John the masters in Venice team includes me Vandalur producer Mariah Gosset an audio engineer Jake Wallace thank you to everyone of family loss and for your support this show just continues to grow in our community is thriving make sure you are a member of our Facebook group the link is at our show notes and today we challenge you to share the show with a friend or a loved one who you think will like our interviews we will be back next week thanks for listening