Smash Notes
Paul Berberian on the “addictive” nature of mentoring
How did Sphero CEO Paul Berberian make the number one toy in the world? Sphero got to make the BB8 toy robot because of a connection made during a Techstars accelerator. That’s the power of the network. Hear him tell that story, and more.
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Notes
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Paul Berberian grew up in Los Angeles, California. His father was an immigrant to the United States, originally from Beirut, Lebanon. He spoke English as his six language and he was the typical American rags-to-riches story; hard-working, running a bunch of little businesses. Paul grew up working for all of his dad's little companies.
They made liniments for professional race horses, sold used pinball machines, had a diner, made hand lotion for emergency medical kits and even made the stuff that numbs your gum before a dentist gives you the novocaine.
They were not great at running those businesses, but they would buy them along with the whole building, and use the business's cash flow to pay for the mortgage, eventually owning a bunch of buildings in Southern California.
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Link VTC, a video-conferencing business. On Give First, Paul Berberian says he bootstrapped Link VTC, grew it from nothing, and sold it within two years. He describes it as an early-1990s version of a service like BlueJeans. It was the first company he actually exited. Before that he had worked in a pile of family businesses, from supplies for racehorses to the gel a dentist uses before a Novocain needle, and he had given a different company away to his cousin. After Link VTC he cofounded Raindance Communications, which went public just after the dot-com crash and sold in 2006. He later became CEO of Sphero.
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Sphero makes robotic products focused on getting kids interested in coding through stem based education. They sell to schools around the world and are currently the number one robot used in schools K through 8. Students use Sphero robots to bring their lessons to life.