Nick Evans has always been fascinated with how to get a lot more done with less work.
A Nebraska native, Evans created a $20 piece of hardware, Tile, that users attach to anything they’re prone to lose—phone, remote, car keys. Syncing with iOS devices, users can seek out their stuff along with the help of trusted friends and family also dialed into their network.
His light-hearted, easy-going attitude is underscored by an intense motivation, highlighted by his impressive resume.
After graduating from University of Nebraska-Omaha in 2006 with a degree in computer engineering, Evans spent several months in Germany for an internship with an automotive company. While he considered a more permanent move abroad, Evans decided to relocate slightly closer to home and accepted a job with Green Hills Software in Santa Barbara, Calif.
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“Growing up in Nebraska, Santa Barbara was sort of a dream I’d always had,” the 31-year-old co-founder and CEO said. “You know, living on the beach, good weather all the time. I originally worried about missing home, but I wasn’t homesick once, because Santa Barbara is a great place to live.”
Still, after two years at the company, Evans decided to pursue a graduate degree in computer engineering with a concentration in automotive engineering at University of Michigan-Dearborn.
That was 2009, one of the worst years in history for the American car industry.
“It was tough to leave California, and an even harder time to try to get involved with automotive engineering, despite U of M-D being a great school,” Evans said.
During his time in Michigan, Evans came across an engineering consulting position back in California with MindTribe Product Engineering—an opportunity he considered “dream job” territory—but didn’t apply because he thought he needed more experience.
“I only stayed in the program at U of M-D for a year, and basically just tried to get the kind of experience I needed to get hired at MindTribe,” Evans said. “I would reach out to them, asking, ‘Hey, what kinds of classes should I be taking if I want to apply for a job with you some day?’”
His persistence eventually paid off, and in Sept. 2009, Evans joined MindTribe as a software engineer and worked on “a lot of interesting projects” for anyone from big corporations to small startups.
But he couldn’t shake the sense he was supposed to doing something else—something different, something bigger.
So Evans left MindTribe in hot pursuit of his own startup, called LiveSprout, only to realize a couple months later the new project wasn’t going in the right direction. He met with Aaron Levie of Box, who he knew through mutual friends, to discuss his next steps.
Levie asked Evans to describe his vision for LiveSprout, and how he thought it could make an impact. Evans quickly realized he didn’t have good answers.
“That was hard, admitting to myself that it was time to move on from a project that I spent so much time pursuing,” he said. “So much of what you hear about in the startup culture is ‘failing fast,’ but what I found during that period was how important it is to find the truth behind yourself and your motivations, as well as figure out what customers want.”
Evans shut down LiveSprout and started job hunting. He interviewed for a startup called Firebase, but wasn’t offered the position. “That was hard,” Evans said. “I was feeling rejected without knowing what direction I should head in.”
But Firebase was a Y Combinator company, and its co-founders, Andrew Lee and James Tamplin, sent an email to other companies in the accelerator asking if anyone needed an engineer with Evans’ skill set.
Two companies answered—Pebble and Lockitron—and would become Evan’s next two employers.
“We blew past our goal and then we really blew past our goal”
For the next few years, Evans worked as an independent contract engineer for Pebble, Lockitron and Livescribe, all startups that focused on the connected consumer electronics market. In fact, Pebble became the most-funded project on Kickstarter when it raised $10.2 million in just 30 days, starting a crowdfunding revolution in terms of hardware in the “smart” devices market.
“I sort of hopped around then, which employers didn’t like,” Evans said. “I actually wasn’t that great of an employee because I really always wanted to start my own thing in the back of my head. When I look back at this time, I see that it was a major period of growth, where I tried to figure out what motivated me, how I get motivated and what it is I actually wanted to do.
“I had to sit and think through questions like, ‘What is it that I want? Why am I not happy with a day job or a standard engineering position?’”
Inspired by the crowdfunding successes of Pebble and Lockitron, Evans finally started work on the project that would become Tile.
He called Mike Farley, a former co-worker from Green Hills Software, and asked if he would have any interest in starting a company together. Farley said yes, and within 24 hours, the pair began daily calls to figure out how to get their project off the ground.
Farley and Evans initially viewed Tile as an interesting side project—something reserved for nights and weekends—in addition to their full-time day jobs.
But that soon changed.
“Most people we talked to thought the product was cool, but one in five people had a really big reaction, like, ‘I could have used that this morning with my keys!’ So we knew we had a dedicated population of people that really needed and wanted a product like this,” Evans said.
In late Nov. 2012, Evans and Farley took the plunge, quit their jobs and started working on Tile full time. A few months later, a friend suggested they apply for funding through an accelerator called Tandem Capital.
“So we did,” laughs Evans. “We were using our money very creatively at the time. It was just Mike and I and a few specialized contractors helping us.”
Their application led to an interview and an eventual offer. Four months later, Farley and Evans launched a self-hosted campaign, with an initial goal to raise $20,000. And just like that, the money—and the interest in Tile—started pouring in.
“After the launch, things started going really well. We blew past our goal, and then we really blew past our goal,” Evans said.
In just 34 days, the company raised $2.6 million through Tile pre-orders—that’s approximately 180,000 Tiles to almost 50,000 buyers. Evans said that most buyers are folks in their thirties and forties, as opposed to the younger audience he and Farley initially expected.
“With a startup, you always need to find a target market at the beginning. But it’s funny,” he continues, “Tile is for any kind of person to use. We mainly targeted people who like products that work, not necessarily someone super into the newest gadget.”
Creating a network to find your stuff
Since that first month, Evans says that sales have “not been insignificant,” but past that, the co-founders are keeping any other numbers quiet. The biggest reason? To promote one of Tile’s key features: its network of users.
A promo video for the product suggests that the more people in one’s network, the better the product works.
“Usually you lose stuff in dense areas, so the range of Tiles is 50 to 150 feet. But if you leave something behind—like your purse at a restaurant—it will mark the last place it was seen within the radius, and other users can help you find your stuff,” Evans explains.
But that doesn’t mean any user can find your Tiles at any time. Evans says Tile is very serious about its users’ security and ensuring no one else can see information about your whereabouts. Tile only uploads information about the physical location of devices to its servers, never information about Tile’s users.
Evans also is quick to differentiate Tile from its competitors. “With so many products, it seems like a good idea at first, but then you use it for a few hours and end up not using it days later or even throwing it away,” he said. “That’s the hard part about building a product. You have to make something people want to buy, and most importantly, keep using.”
The company’s philosophy, as a result, is that people will buy a product that keeps them from losing their stuff. And they’ll keep using it, so long as it is affordable and efficient. The $19.95 price tag for a Tile certainly makes the former true, and for Evans, the latter involves a one-year product lifespan.
“Tiles aren’t rechargeable, so people have to buy new ones, but that’s important for a number of reasons,” he said. “The fact that users pay for new Tiles means that the initial cost of product is very low. You only pay for a year at a time, which makes more sense than paying $60 to $90 for a product you may only use for a little while.”
Evans anticipates that Tiles will begin shipping to its Kickstarter supporters and pre-sale buyers this spring, unless a final round of product testing pushes that date back to summer.
“With Tile, we realized that a product could change the world, and we were capable of building it,” Evans said. “Relieving the stress and anxiety of lost items is inarguably a good thing for the world, and now we’re in the position to rid of the world of lost items, if we do it right. We believe we now have that responsibility.”
Although Evans has spent the last eight years on the West Coast, his advice for all entrepreneurs transcends location.
“It was so important for me to surround myself with people who had similar goals and interests, who I could learn and grow from,” Evans said. “For what I wanted to do, that was easier on the West Coast, just because there’s a large population of people here thinking about those same things.
“However, there are people like that in Omaha and in the Midwest. You just have to seek them out. If you have goals and dreams related to startups, find like-minded people and spend time with them. Make them your friends.”
Tile is still taking pre-orders, and Evans says he continues to be thrilled at the huge response—but not for the reason you might expect.
“It’s fun to exceed goals, to have a product reach more people than you expected, for a company to pull in more money than you planned,” Evans said. “It’s kind of breaking the rules a bit. Not in a bad way, but these are not the societal career rules you learn about in school.
“For me, this was about finding my own path and discovering something much more fulfilling and interesting.”
Learn more about Tile and how it helps you keep better track of your stuff:
Credits: Photos courtesy of Nick Evans.
