Founders at Work.pdf

150 Founders at Work
Lazaridis: That’s right. We gave them the opportunity to go two-way, so that
they could send a message as well as receive it. That people found very valuable.
But the system was expensive—the monthly fee was expensive, because it
was brand new; it was embryonic. But we knew that email was catching on.
We had email at RIM as soon as we started the company. We had email on
our business cards back when other business cards had telex numbers on them.
Every time I gave out my card, people would ask me, “What’s an email
address?” It wasn’t until about 5 years later that we started to converge on
something called a fax number. It wasn’t until 15 years after university that you
really started to see people adopting email in the Fortune 1000 in a big way. So
in 1999, we knew the time was right, and we had done a lot of research to make
sure we were launching at the right time.
We decided to launch it in New York, in the financial markets, because they
were big users of systems and email. They were also affluent, so they could
afford the service early on. They were big users of data and information, and
they needed it in real time. To them, time was money in a big way. The
BlackBerry system gave them that in spades.
What was interesting was how we named it, because it goes back to our
research roots. We decided to do it very scientifically. We went out and found
one of the leading naming companies at the time, called Lexicon, and we
worked with them for 6 months to come up with the name. It was probably the
most expensive word I ever bought.
BlackBerry ended up being one of the all-time most famous brands worldwide.
It works everywhere. We tested it around the world. It was one of
40 names that were on the list that we narrowed it down to. We did a lot of testing
to see what it meant to people. Could we build a brand, an experience,
around it? There was a lot of thought around that name.
Livingston: As a Canadian founder, do you think there’s anything that readers
should know about advantages to being in Canada? Were you ever tempted to
move to Silicon Valley?
Lazaridis: I have to tell you, we were so busy that we never really thought it
made a difference. One of the great things about being in Canada is that there’s
this education that is available to everyone at the highest level, and that’s really
what helped us. There was never a thought in my mind as to “should I put it
somewhere else?” Regardless of whether we should put RIM in the United
States or not, even the idea of where I should put it in Canada. There was never
any hesitation. I had to have this company next to University of Waterloo and
Wilfrid Laurier, a university down the street, because I knew that we needed to
draw this talent to grow. There’s something about having the proximity to the
students and university in terms of brand awareness.
In fact, when we first leased our building here right next to the university,
we could put a sign up, and I remember they were asking, “Do you like this
sign? Do you like that sign?” I said, “Actually, I don’t care about that. What’s
important to me are the signs on the back of the building.” Of course, everyone
recoiled from that. I explained to them, “I don’t really care if anyone else knows