A Discussion with Ben Weintraub, CEO, Board Member, and Co-Founder of Kajeet

Pamela Rucker: Hi, I'm Pamela Rucker, an instructor for Harvard Professional Development. I focus on coaching executives in the areas of leadership, strategy and innovation.

Welcome to Leading With Passion, a series honoring innovative small business leaders using their unique capabilities to improve people's lives. Today, I'm joined by Ben Today, I'm joined by Ben Weintraub, CEO, board member and co-founder of Kajeet, a leading IoT connectivity services provider. Ben's work has enabled thousands of schools, healthcare providers, government organizations and world class enterprises to better connect with their students, employees and customers.

Ben Weintraub: I’m honored to be here.

Pamela: Now tell me about Kajeet and what it is you do, and how you happened to get there?

Ben: So Kajeet is an IoT connectivity service provider. Which means we provide cellular connectivity in a variety of use cases, including education, healthcare and transportation. But we didn't start off that way. We started off with a passion for kids and providing appropriate connectivity for them. And this was 20 years when we founded the company. And the hottest thing in a kid's pocket was a Motorola Razr, which had no broadband, it was basically texting. And if you remember mobile WAP services, like a very rudimentary internet connection. But we saw what was going to happen.

We knew that eventually they'd have super-computers in their pocket, which is really true. So we thought there was a necessity. Although connectivity is good, you can have, it's not all good. You can have too much connectivity. You can have connectivity to inappropriate items. So, we wanted to provide a service, which would manage that connectivity. And today that's still true, even in other use cases. So our primary customers today are schools and school systems, who provide broad band to kids who don't have it at home. And then, we also provide connectivity in other use cases. Generally what we're looking for is providing connectivity where it can be used for the good of society. And also, where we think the connectivity is inevitable. In other words, all those in that use case, the connections will happen over time.

Pamela: It's interesting. So you said that you started off wanting to work on controls for kids. And I imagine that if you can handle that for children, you can handle it for anybody, right? Because kids don't necessarily know what's safe. And sometimes you need to define that for them. Can you talk about how that sort of helps you with what you're doing today?

Ben: Yeah, absolutely. With kids, first of all I would say, we don't decide what's safe, or not. We provide the controls for the customer. In the case of schools, it's the school IT administrator defines what's appropriate. But what might not be appropriate for a kid, that same control can be used to define what's appropriate for example, an IoT-connected device. An ATM machine, or payment terminal, or a wireless camera, that needs to be secured. That content, that stream, that healthcare device, needs to go only to healthcare provider. So we prevent inappropriate content in the sense of security. So, who can assess that camera, who can assess that health data stream. So those controls are equally applicable in other use cases.

Pamela: So take me back to the early days when you're first starting to work on these controls. What's going well? And, what wasn't going well?

Ben: It was a typical basement startup. It was literally three dads in the basement of one of the dad's rooms.

Pamela: Really?

Ben: Yeah, pre-funding. And we went for almost 18 months developing the concepts and doing research, and then taking it out to VCs to raise money. So there were a lot of trips out to Silicon Valley. Here, where we are now. And what went well, what didn't? It took a long time to get money. And what went well was people bought into the concept, they really thought they saw this coming. They saw the trend in kids getting connectivity. And then they knew an appropriate type of service was something that would work well.

Pamela: And I wanna back up, because in all of my research on you, I did not know that. I did not know it was three people in one room, trying to come up with a dream. And you know, we often talk about this idea of two guys and a truck, or two guys in a garage trying to come up with ideas. What keeps you motivated in times like that when you are having challenges of trying to get the company to grow?

Ben: Oh, it's the customers. It's always the customers. I mean, there are a lot of hard times. It was three, I should mentioned three dads founding the company, the company Kajeet, the company's name, Kajeet, is an acronym of the kid's names, or anagram. So K for Ken, A for Alex, and so on. The founder's kids are basically the form of the Kajeet name. Five created the Kajeet name. There are a lot of things to overcome. Not just the funding, but the distribution. Technically, and I'm the technical guy, so maybe it's easier for me to say this. But, building the service was actually the easy part. It was designing the right kind of service. Making it easy for customers to adopt making it easy for distribution understand what the value proposition is to the customer. Those were the challenges.

Pamela: And that's something that a lot of small businesses struggle with, too. Understanding where they can add value to other organizations. So how did you look at the opportunities for value? When did you see those opportunities coming up for you guys?

Ben: Well, in the early days, penetration of cell phones in the kid's sector wasn't even that high. So it was a little tough. But when we, when you put the right device in a kid's hands, everybody got excited. And then when you showed them what you can do to make sure the content was appropriate, I think every parent wants to make sure the things their kid accesses, whether it's the internet, or otherwise, their experiences are appropriate experiences that they can guide according to their standards. They become excited about it.

Pamela: It's interesting. Because we've seen the proliferation of all of this access across the internet. Video, data, you name it. There's a level of privacy that goes with that, too, and the level of controls that comes with that. And now, since everything that we do is probably built, or sold, or accessed, or serviced, somehow on a mobile device, there's obviously data that goes with that, too. It sounds like when you give people mobility of that experience, and not just mobility of the data. Is that correct?

Ben: That's right. Everything, connectivity is essential today. And a funny story on that is, when schools were dismissed for COVID, several things happened. Including the kids no longer had the internet that they would of had in class. They also didn't have, for a lot of the students in the U.S., free or reduced lunch. So what some schools did, is they took their buses, and they drove them out to the communities, and this was when kids weren't going to class. And the buses provided two things. Food and internet. And the internet was the Kajeet internet.

Pamela: Let's talk about how that evolves. How do you find yourself in the middle of a global pandemic, everybody has the same problem. So it's not like you can come up with something that's gonna change the world. How do you go from, I wanna control where kids get to on the internet, to let me put internet on the bus, give them access to it, and feed them a meal. How does that come about?

Ben: Well, we had been providing Wi-Fi on buses for a few years prior to COVID. So, it wasn't that hard for us, because we knew the right way to install Wi-Fi on the bus. The right equipment, the right antenna, the right power integration, and so on. And then the right way, the right carrier access, and the content filtering. But we needed to do it really quickly, in a large quantity during COVID. The biggest challenges were probably getting equipment and getting out to the bus fleets to make the installations.

Pamela: What kind of problems did kids have? I could imagine, if they don't have access to the internet, they don't have access to food, how do they get around the bus to get all of that to happen? How did you manage that process?

Ben: Well in schools, I have kids, two of them are still in high school. And their homework assignments, we live in Fairfax County. It's a middle-class neighborhood in Virginia. And they don't bring textbooks home anymore. They're all internet-based, all their learning. So what that means is, if they're on a bus ride, or they're not in the classroom, they have to have internet access. So, they can't pop open a textbook on the bus, for example. So it became essential to provide that service, and especially if you don't have internet at home, that was how you got internet. Was either at school, or on the bus. And when there was COVID, there was no at school.

Pamela: It seems by providing that capability, though, you sort of decrease the digital divide that we see happening across the country. How did you feel about being able to do that?

Ben: That's a primary motivation. You asked earlier what motivates me and it's the customer. So we've had the privilege of seeing, meeting students, meeting teachers, meeting school boards. And when they're providing this kind of access, it's a little interesting. It sometimes gets emotional. And our employees love that as well. They'll go out to help distribute items to the school. So typically, it's not a school bus that we're providing Wi-Fi to. We do that, but the more typical solution is handing a child a Chrome Book, with embedded LTE connectivity, or a hot spot with embedded connectivity. And that connectivity goes to our platform, which then provides monitoring, and the filtering and the analytics. But when those distribution events happen, it can get emotional. It's very energizing to see a kid walk home with a device and be able to use the internet. And get access to all their educational content without any inhibitions.

Pamela: You touched on two things that stand out to me. One is that, it's incredibly important to know the job can be done when you work with an organization. And what it is that you're trying to accomplish with them. And so functionally, yes, you are helping to provide these controls. But we all know in management theory, that there's also the emotional job. And part of the emotional job, it looks like you're doing for your clients, has been extended to your students to help them feel safe. To help them feel like they have access to help them feel connected. To help them feel wanted and valued, by giving them this device that allows them to do what every other kid is able to do in the country.

Ben: Yeah, it came across clearly, especially during COVID. Where we had stories. And these stories were in the news, as well. But we were closer to them, so we had them more directly and they were more personal to us. But stories of students sitting outside of a McDonald's parking lot at night. At 8 p.m, or 9 p.m. at night to get internet access. Or, they would go to the library, which closes at 6 p.m., or something. And they'd sit outside, close enough to get access. And this is in the winter. It does it in all weather conditions. They would sit on the concrete curb just to get internet access. So it's much nicer for us to be able to say, "Hey, take the device, go home, sit at your dinner table, in a warm house, and you get everything that the other kids get."

Pamela: What a visual you paint for that, too. So can you imagine a child having to sit outside in the cold near a McDonald's just to do their homework?

Ben: Yeah, they're not gonna be able to do as well.

Pamela: Right. You cannot succeed in that type of environment. So I can see, too, then how this might allow some of your employees to really love working there. Because one of the jobs that you have to do as a company is also define ways to make the employees want to work at your organization, right? To make it more than just a job. And we see for our graduates that are coming out of college right now that many of them are saying that they don't just wanna focus on money, they wanna focus on mission. And we see on earnings calls and growth opportunities, that ESG has become a big part of this. And so, by contributing to things that benefits society, you're finding ways for people to wanna work for your organization. Is that true?

Ben: Yes, I think we built a company based on our passion. At that time, all of our kids were young. 20 years ago, I basically had a two-year-old and one on the way. And that has certainly carried over. So I think someone told me once, I don't remember the exact quote, but "It's easy to do a good job, if you do good work." And so we have a mission that providing connectivity for good. The tag line for Kajeet used to be "Use it for good." We've evolved it, because we're no longer consumer-focused. But that theme has stayed with the company throughout its years.

Pamela: Let me double-tap into that, if I can. What do you tell employees? How do they figure out what good it is that you do, when you say "Use it for good." What do you tell them when you interview them? What do you tell them when they join that helps them?

Ben: I think they know what our mission is, because if you go to our website, it's obvious. We serve students. And they get that. That's well-known. When we talk about other situations, like healthcare, it's actually a similar customer segment. It's a similar problem, it's the digital divide. There are under-privileged, under-connected individuals, communities. And what we're doing is bringing them the same services that you or I would have. Especially again, during COVID. So whether you had a telehealth visit with your doctor, so you don't need to drive. If you're rural, you'd have to drive a long distance to get to the right practitioner. You have to, in COVID, expose yourself to other people in that location.

So, we provided the same sort of access for that. And similar things happen in transportation, or business continuity, where we're making sure that business can continue to operate. We're making sure that we're helping the transformation from fossil-burning vehicles to electric vehicles. By connecting the grids and the cars and the charging stations. So I think that gets across. It doesn't take too long to explain it to them. And then, what I do tell employees, I give them an onboarding talk, a day or two in. And I say we have our culture, and here's what it looks like, and we have our mission, and this is our mission statement. But at the end of the day, I tell them, it's all about the work. It's all about serving customers. We have good customers with important needs. And we need to deliver. You can't let them down. So they're not letting me down if they don't do their job. That's not the impression I'm trying to leave with them, it's the customer. And when you say it that way, and you create the image of a kid sitting on a concrete curb trying to get internet access. Or an older person in a rural area, who would have to drive to get to the proper doctor, the proper expert, that speaks for itself.

Pamela: So what it sounds like you're describing to me, number one, is motivation. There's a reason that the people want to do this. There's definitely a value proposition to that. There's a mission behind the things that you do. There's a story about how you got here, and why you're doing, who you serve. There's messaging you give people. So that when they join, use it for good. I love that term. And I'm assuming there's a measurement, right? So how do you know that they're doing it for good? Because what you described for me are these moments. All these moments where a kid might be outside of the bus, or outside of McDonald's. Or, a person might be trying to visit their doctor. How do you measure whether people have done good?

Ben: Well, you're talking to an MIT grad. So, I'm heavy into numbers. And my employees, maybe not. Maybe don't like it.

Pamela: They may not like that.

Ben: How heavily I'm into numbers. But there are many ways to measure. We measure customers and retention rates, and certainly revenue. But we also measure things and we display this directly to our customers, for example. Homework hours. So we tell a client, an IT director at school, when they log into our console, the first number they see is the number of homework hours completed over this time period, so past seven days.

Pamela: Nice.

Ben: And that is directly communicated to them. Hey, I'm paying Kajeet for service, and I'm getting my value. And you know, there's a lot of analytics behind what is a homework hour. We're watching the websites they visit. If it's Con Academy, or they're Pearson textbooks online, and so on. And so, that's how we derive that number. But that number, we built that counter, that measurement a long time ago. And it's really resonated. And we then try to do it in other segments, as well. To find, you were talking about delivering something to customers that simple. And that makes it simple. Because if you were just paying for gigabytes, if your measurement was gigabytes, that's somewhat meaningless.

Pamela: That doesn't tell you very much. So you said that you love numbers, you love measurement. You love systems, you went to MIT. Tell me about your path in life. How did you get to the place where you were working with Kajeet.

Ben: Well, going back from where I am today. I was working in wireless. And then I met the two other dads who wanted to build this particular service for kids. That nugget of an idea came from Daniel, my partner, and the chairman of our company. And I love the idea of building the platform behind it. To deliver on that vision. But before then, I was a nuclear engineer in the Navy. And another highly-quantitative job. And those are, really I've only had three jobs in my life. College and aerospace. Studied aerospace. Nuclear engineer in the Navy for seven years. And then a wireless job in retail, so that was more allowing me to understand the technology and distribution and then building the Kajeet platform.

Pamela: So, let me just say thank you for your service.

Ben: Thank you.

Pamela: I see this idea of service, and society, and systems all coming together in your life. That lead you up to what you're doing right now at Kajeet. Do you see that?

Ben: Yeah, you could say it that. I don't know, sit back and think about it like that. But, that's probably accurate.

Pamela: That's a beautiful thing, though. Because I'm very interested in how people got to where they are. And why it is they think the way that they do. And the fact that you say you love the measurement. You love to build a platform for the vision. You love the things that you're working on, definitely tells me that you love these complex adaptive systems that can sometimes be pretty wicked. The more you touch them, the worse they get. And you have to love trying to unravel all of that. Trying to figure all of that out. But I additionally like the fact that, there's a service component for society in it. And that you realize, even if I do solve this problem, I'm solving this problem for someone other than just the organization that I work with. I'm trying to make the world a better place.

Ben: I agree with that. There's a lot of good connectivity can do. At all levels. Just monitoring machinery, and making sure it continues to run. That can mean the difference between having a power outage, or not having a power outage.

Pamela: Yes, yeah.

Ben: And having sensors and collecting that data requires a network. And today, connectivity often means wireless. And so, cellular wireless expands the use cases where you can collect the data that keeps all of that critical infrastructure going. So, we're just trying to help with that, and we're picking when we go to market, we just don't say, "Hey, buy/sell your connectivity from Kajeet. We have security, and we have a platform with controls." We try to look at each use case and then deliver it in a very specific fashion. So no one else that I know of will say, well sell you, sell a school, sell your connectivity, that has a measurement of homework hours. They just don't do that. When we look at healthcare, we have similar metrics and delivery, in the way we bring the solution to the customer, where they're getting exactly what they need in the right packaging, with the right hardware. So that they can immediately put it to use. And they don't have to worry about all the cellular technology, all the complexities that you're talking about.

Pamela: Let me ask you about this idea of connectivity. Because I know COVID gave all of us a burning platform. There was a reason why we all had to be connected in the way that we were. And a lot of strides were made toward students being able to go to school online, telehealth and so forth. Do you see people continuing in that direction, or are they backsliding a little bit?

Ben: It's a little bit of a backslide. I think schools are, they have a lot to worry about. Safe schools is a hot topic these days. That by the way, also can be helped with sensors and teachers carrying badges around today, that they can just push a button to immediately notify that there's an issue. But yeah, there's some backtracking. But I think the COVID woke the entire country up to this digital divide, that had always existed. And still exists today.

Even with all the funding that was generated during COVID, there's still millions of kids without appropriate broadband access. Sometimes due to coverage. They live in an area where it's just very, very difficult to provide coverage. And other times, simply due to economic reasons. And so, it's still a problem. Schools are still working to fix that problem. They're just challenged with a lot of different issues. But if schools connecting kids was here pre-COVID, like this big of a, they were solving at this amount, they did it to that degree in COVID. And they've come back, but they're still solving it, factors above where they were before COVID.

Pamela: Yeah, way better than were they were before.

Ben: Yeah, yeah.

Pamela: So let me ask you then, so what do you see then, given what you do as growth areas for your organization? Where are you able to go back and do some additional good?

Ben: Well, that's where we look at other segments. We had actually thought, created, it's funny, if I look back at my 2020 notes for the company, I delivered goals for the year. And those goals were delivered in December of 2019. And those goals included, let's go explore enterprise applications. And that got thrown out the window in March of 2020. Because we, it was all we could do to barely keep up with the demand for schools. And of course, that was what we wanted to be doing. So there are other segments like we've talked about. And we're just trying to find the right ones where we can dive deep, understand the segments, and deliver the holistic solution. When we started with education, we hired former teachers, bus drivers, principals, to really deeply understand their needs. And put ourselves in their shoes. And it takes time to do that. So that's why we don't just provide this broad horizontal platform. We try to understand each segment.

Pamela: I love the fact that you said that one of the things that you provided was this shrink-wrap solution, where you just open it up and it worked for the kid, right? And I can see how in a lot of different industries that might work. Because we know from management theory, that one of the reasons people don't use products is that, "Look, it's just too hard. I don't know how to use it, I don't know how to set it up. I don't know how to create it." This idea that I can deliver it to you in the moment, and it just works, can probably benefit a lot of different industries, and a lot of different segments of society. Do you see how that might be useful somewhere else, outside of school?

Ben: Yeah, certainly, certainly. If you're, for example, when we talk about healthcare, there are two specific uses. Healthcare is a very broad term. But there are two specific use cases we look at. And this is just an example, trying to answer your question. So one of them is the telehealth that we were talking about earlier. But another is remote patient monitoring. So there are numerous devices. You can walk into a CVS, and there are probably 20 digital devices for blood pressure, blood oxygen. But they don't automatically report back to your care provider.

They don't automatically log in information. There may be Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connected devices. But then your 80-year-old mom, in my case, there's no way she's gonna connect that device to the internet. So when we provide cellular connectivity, we're looking at that use case, trying to make it simple. For the device manufacturer, who's not an expert in cellular. They don't know coverage, they don't know antenna structures. They don't FCC certification requirements. They don't about how to implement security in the stream, in the cellular data stream. So you got a relatively dumb IoT device. It's not running Norton Anti-virus. It's just sitting on the internet on a cellular connection. That becomes a little scary. We made sure that they can get the right cellular module, the right network, the right antenna, and the right security on that device, and we take care of that. And all they have to worry about is the healthcare element.

Pamela: And it seems to me when you start to do tech, when you start doing tech from good like that, the stakes go way up, right? Because if you flub up for a regular system environment, that might be a problem, but flubbing up with healthcare, or flubbing up with school or something else, the risk is much higher. How do you deal with creating solutions in such a high-pressure environment like that?

Ben: It's interesting. Because if you had asked me a few years ago, if I wanted to be, and we have other use cases, including first responder use cases. If you had asked me if I wanted, I would of told you a few years ago, I don't wanna be in that space, because there's too much risk. In the nuclear engineering world, I've experienced that risk. So but we have evolved the platform over the years. So the years of hardening and improving and scaling and making the platform redundant, and just pure experience of so many hundreds of thousands of connections and terabytes of data a day, looking at our outages, and how the system handles it, and how it's redundant. That gives me the confidence to deliver to these other use cases.

Pamela: So everything you're saying to me, though, seems like it matches your background, that love of systems, that love of service. Because for me, that would be terrifying. That much data. I would hate to have the responsibility of managing that. Because of the concern that I would drop that.

Ben: There are a lot of good people on our team. And I certainly don't do it alone. I joke around. Today, I simply push. I'm an HR person who pushes a lot of email around. 'Cause all I do is really hire people and integrate the team and help them find the right direction. But we have a lot of good people that take care of all the things that you mentioned.

Pamela: How do you find the right people for mission-based work like that?

Ben: That's tough. That's probably, I'd say most employees are word-of-mouth. They're friend referrals. Referrals from existing employees, there's people in our network. We have vendors, customers and a lot of times people come in through those channels.

Pamela: So take me through what a typical day would be like then. And so if you're going, if you're getting up and your dashboard is going off, and you're trying to respond, what's a typical day like for you?

Ben: Well, I typically get up around 4:20 in the morning. And then I go to crossfit, and that kind of sets me up for the day. Because I come home from that energized and ready to go. And then, I'll just start off. I get, my two in high school are pretty much self-sufficient. So although I would love to walk them to school, they absolutely don't want that any more.

Pamela: Right.

Ben: So, they pretty much just want me to go do my job. And I guess mostly at the office, I'm trying to repeat the same themes again and again. Because more people, and speaking of information overload, it's not just for kids, it's for employees too. There are all kinds of distractions. And there's too many different methods of communication. Too much information coming through those methods of communication. And I'm just trying to stay focused on the top five. And so that's most of my day, I'd say, is keeping people focused on the task at hand.

Pamela: I understand the mission, the message, the motivation, I understand the moments you're getting. I do not understand 4:20 in the a.m. Crossfit?

Ben: Well, I go to bed, around by 10:00.

Pamela: Is that a holdover from your military background? Having to get up? Or, have you always been a person that's an early riser like that?

Ben: I was not an early riser in college. Except perhaps, 'cause the Navy made me get up. ROTC made me get up early. But I call it old man's syndrome, I don't know what it is. But I do naturally get up early, and go to bed early.

Pamela: Let me switch and pivot a bit to the future. When I heard you talking about the fact that you guys supplied internet on the buses. My mind immediately went to, what could the growth opportunity be there? Have you guys thought at all about going into autonomous vehicles, and looking at where the world may be going in terms of that?

Ben: Oh yeah, that's an area with a lot of connectivity needs. And so much information with autonomous driving, and route information, and vehicle telemetry, and diagnostics. We're not in that space because it's crowded. Because there are already a lot who are focused on it. And that's fine, I would expect that to happen. We specialized in education. And there's really no one else who specializes in education. But in vehicles, the type of vehicle connectivity you're talking about, there are people who got there first and that's great. They know it better than I do at this point. And I don't really wanna try to catch up.

Pamela: I love the point that you're making, though, too. Knowing exactly where to play and how to win is an important part of any management theory that you look at. Knowing who your real customers are and where you really provide value. And the fact that you said, "Hey, someone beat us there. They probably know if better than I do. But nobody is doing this particular thing as well as we're doing it." And that's, I think, is our sweet spot. Let me ask you another one, though. What about the idea of connecting for growing, for agriculture, for growing food, and using...

Ben: Yeah, that is interesting to us. Higher productivity, less water use, less fertilizer use. There's a lot of sensors, a lot of data that comes with that. That data can, there are a lot of sources for the data, including the satellite imagery, and so on. But cellular connectivity plays a role and we have customers who do that. So we are looking at that. We're looking at the special needs. I haven't gotten too smart on that, so I can't yet. So I can't talk in detail. But it is interesting to us.

Pamela: That idea of a systems and service in society, plays really well into that. If I were to cast a light into the future, and say "What do you wish you were doing "with this technology later on?" What would you want to do with it? If you didn't have any limitations.

Ben: I would say I would like the story that I think has played out with schools, which is years of figuring out the segment, and then watching it hit it's hockey stick. And then basically feeling good, that hey, we had the right target. We had the right solution for that. We were on target with our solution and the need. And then all of a sudden, everybody adopted it. And it would be nice to see that happen in these other use cases. And then, we'll go to the next use case and the next use case. I think there's no cellular connectivity is in it's own heyday right now. With, there's not just macro networks, there are private networks. The government doesn't license spectrum in a different way. So anyone can create, you could create a cellular network at your home or we could create one here in a day. And that provides a whole bunch of new opportunity. Just looking at the different use cases, and seeing them come to fruition, I don't have a big vision of going to Mars or anything like that. But that would be nice.

Pamela: Do you have a favorite industry that you'd really prefer?

Ben: To be in with our solution?

Pamela: Yeah.

Ben: I think healthcare is great. I think the ones we're in. If I knew of a better one, I'd be working on it.

Pamela: Yeah, yeah.

Ben: Put it that way.

Pamela: I wanna go back to what you just said about what you wished would happen. So if you could put together a solution that everybody would use, you said that would be great. And it seems like you put your finger right on the pulse of what people needed right when they needed it. If you take yourself back to the time that you were in then, what's something that you wish you knew then?

Ben: That it always takes longer.

Pamela: Say more about that. Why?

Ben: So in '03, we created the company to serve kids with cellphones. And as a consumer product. And that happened a little bit later than we thought. So, we spent money and time. I think it's just better to know that patience is good. And it takes more time, more money to get done whatever you think it is. That shouldn't deter you from having energy and passion, that drive. Drive hard every day. But it's good to have that, balance that with a bit of pragmatism, of okay, well, it's good to be a little bit early. Not too early, not too late. So that's kind of, finding that the porridge is right mix is an important concept.

Pamela: I think that's such an important point for business owners, too, though. That even though you are out there running your business, or if you're leading an organization, and you control a lot of things. Sometimes you can't control how long it takes, or how much it cost. No matter how much you try to. It sometimes just takes what it takes, right? And so, how do you develop the patience to know that? Is it just through experience that you've learned that? Is that your nature? How do you manage that? Because I know a lot of leaders struggle with that. That they aren't able to control as much as they would like to.

Ben: That's a tough one. There are a lot of unknowns. But there were a lot of unknowns in my other disciplines. In the nuclear world there were. It's an interesting contrast, because I think people think the nuclear power plant world is everything is exactly known. But that's not how plants were designed. We know a lot and we know a lot more today than we did 50 years, when the first nuclear power plants were built by the Navy. But you basically create a range of expected values, and you have to operate within that range. So we don't know if it's gonna be here or if it's gonna be there. But it still needs to work.

And so, there are some in the entrepreneurial world, that I like to think of it as your writing an edge between going too fast, spending too fast, whatever it is, of disaster. And then, just not doing enough. And sometimes I think you need to think of the edge as it's not actually a sharp edge, it's a wide range. And you might wanna be on that plateau, so that just in case things don't go well, you're okay. Or, if they go great, you're also prepared for that. It's a hard balance.

Pamela: That's a great way to think about it, though, Ben. Because I often hear people thinking about being on the cutting edge or the bleeding edge. And it's almost as either you're there and you fall off, or you're there and you die, or someone takes you out. This idea that the edge actually has a flat service to it, where you can exist, and have some variability in things that you don't normally think you have variability in is an important point, right? Because things may not always go the way that you would expect them to.

Ben: And there’s always just luck, sometimes.

Pamela: Sometimes it's sheer luck.

Ben: And luck favors the prepared, right?

Pamela: Luck favors the prepared. And you can do the same things that other people did, but have a completely different result. Just because of luck. It's such a great point. On that note though, as we're closing out, what's the thing that you think you've been luckiest at in life?

Ben: I don't know. I don't really think of it that way. Luckiest at? I mean the company, we were lucky to have built all these platforms. And at the time we did. I think for what's going on with cellular, the adoption, the hockey stick and all the industries. Looking forward, probably the luckiest thing was realizing that the adoption would be massive. The three of us sitting in the basement talking about what does this really look like? And then talking, we probably did 70 VC pitches for our A-round.

Pamela: Woo! Ouch.

Ben: And just re-explaining. Yeah, it took a little while. But we asked for a lot of money back then. But just explaining and re-explaining where we thought the world was headed. Really refine that thinking, that vision. And we were, I mean, I don't know... lucky? Not lucky? Skilled? But all of that together really helped us formulate what the cellular connected world would look like.

Pamela: On the other side of that, luck just happens, right? There are other things you work really hard for and you try to make achieve. You try to make come about. What are you proudest of? What's the achievement your most proud of for Kajeet?

Ben: It's definitely connecting the schools. For the kids. And getting phone calls. So the bus solution came from Miami. Sorry, USD? Miami school district calling us one day and saying "Hey, I need to put Wi-Fi in a bus, because this thing was gonna happen." And we had to have Wi-Fi on it. And it took us 10 days to go from not knowing how to do it, to installed, and the bus driving around.

Pamela: Wow.

Ben: And that's because we had all the right people and the equipment and obviously the platform of cellular connectivity and controls was already there. So we certainly refined it since then, but the way the team jumped to the need was amazing.

Pamela: That's a great story. I love the way that you are making the world a better place for children, and hopefully healthcare, and all of the other industries you'll be getting into.

Ben: Yeah, thank you. I hope to bring that all to fruition.

Pamela: Thank you for joining us.

Ben: Thank you for having me.