Follow the talent

# 

14 

Michael Sikorsky 

company Robots and Pencils | location Calgary | Founded 2009 

Follow 

the 

talent 

opposites 

attract 

Sikorsky is a 

programmer 

by trade (a.k.a. 

the robot); his 

wife and business 

partner, Camille, 

is a designer 

(a.k.a. the pencil). 

124 THAT’LL NEVER WORK 

photographs by Colin Way

Robots and Pencils 

Born in a Calgary basement, this 

mobile app-maker marries great 

programming with beautiful 

design. The company’s employees 

enjoy a supportive culture designed 

to nurture creative risk-takers. 

The only catch for prospective 

employees: Owner Michael 

Sikorsky demands a minimum 

commitment of a decade→ 

SSome people wait for the perfect 

idea, but that’s not my style. We don’t 

even know what we don’t know, so 

let’s start learning—that’s my style. 

When Apple launched its original 

iPhone in 2007, my wife, Camille, and I 

knew that apps would be massive, and 

we wanted to be part of it. One evening, 

while we were trying to think up 

an idea, we went to the movies. In the 

lobby, there was a machine that, for a 

quarter, would tell you how much your 

date was crushed out on you at the moment—these 

silly, silly experiences for 

a quarter. And so I was like, “We’ll just 

pick one of those.” 

We turned it around virtually in 

days, and we called it Crushfactor. It 

was just us. We were a cliché: husband 

and wife, mom and pop, in our basement 

office. We didn’t even understand 

what you were supposed to do 

in an app store. We were just trying to 

think of anything to get started. Crushfactor 

didn’t do very well, though. I 

hate even talking about it. 

A lot of companies have one 

strength—either the design is really 

good or the software’s really good. It’s 

rare to have both. I was inspired by a 

lecture that scientist and novelist C.P. 

Snow made at Cambridge in 1959, in 

which he talks about how the world 

is split between the sciences and the 

humanities. He believed many of the 

world’s problems were rooted in this 

split and argued for one culture. That 

was the founding idea behind Robots 

and Pencils. Camille is a designer, and 

I’m a programmer. So I’m the original 

robot, and she’s the original pencil. 

Now, we are very, very focused on 

saying no. If you never say no, you 

probably don’t have a very strong 

strategy. My go-to motto is that none 

of the world’s best restaurants are 

Number of 

iPhones sold by 

year (millions) 

2007----- 1.4 

2008----- 11.6 

2009----- 20.7 

2010----- 40 

2011------ 72.3 

2012------ 125.1 

2013------ 150.3 

2014 ----- 69.2 

126 THAT’LL NEVER WORK THAT’LL NEVER WORK 127


“ 

Focus is key—none 

of the world’s 

best restaurants 

are buffets. 

buffets. We wanted to become amazing 

through focus, and I didn’t think it was 

realistic to work across three or four 

platforms when we started. I thought, 

“Let’s get good at one thing—let’s be 

amazing at mobile for iOS.” We’ve 

designed for iPad since 2010, but when 

we started, the iPad didn’t even exist. 

I have two favourite projects. Spy vs. 

Spy was a game based on the classic 

Mad Magazine comic that debuted in 

1961. In the summer of 2012, that app 

was a global hit. I still don’t believe it. 

We started this company, and within 

a couple years we were No. 1 in almost 

every single app store we were 

in, including the United States, the 

United Kingdom, Canada, Australia 

and Germany—all the ones that matter. 

We made it to No. 4 in Japan. It was 

mind-blowing. We were thrilled. 

The other one was PencilCase, 

which we debuted at Macworld in 

2014. It was named the most interesting 

program at the event by famed 

Apple journalist David Morgenstern. 

PencilCase lets anyone build apps—no 

coding experience required—and it’s 

been really interesting watching that 

happen. Financial services companies 

use it to create interactive sales tools 

and to help explain some of their complex 

financial products. It’s been used 

for travel apps and interactive comics 

and books, and some designers have 

been using it as a prototyping tool. 

Our headquarters is in a renovated 

heritage building in Calgary. I love being 

in Canada, and I think the people 

here are awesome. I think every city 

sends a message, and Calgary says, 

“Sure, you can do it—I don’t care if 

you’ve never done it before.” In today’s 

world, it doesn’t really matter where 

you live—the world is disintermediated 

and dematerialized, which means 

you can have impact from anywhere. 

But even in the technology business, 

people will still say that interesting 

things only come out of the Bay Area 

Your mission: 

to escape the 

embassy with 

a top-secret 

briefcase, 

locating a 

missing passport, 

money, key and 

secret plans 

before beating 

your booby-traploving 

opponent 

to the airport. 

or Silicon Valley. If you need venture 

capitalists, it probably makes sense 

to be where they are, but I can’t play 

the game of “Get money, sell company.” 

I’ve been through that cycle a 

few times, and it was one of the worst 

experiences. Back in 2002, I sold a 

software company that I co-founded, 

Servidium, to a Chicago-based outfit. 

When you sell your company, I think 

your meaning bubble pops and you go 

into an existential crisis. At the end 

Forget Silicon 

Valley—Robots 

and Pencils is 

headquartered 

in Calgary. But it 

also has offices 

in Winnipeg, 

Colorado, Texas, 

and London. 

Why? Because 

that’s where they 

happened to find 

great people. 



of the day, if you’re into making and 

building stuff, you can’t care how many 

zeroes are in your bank account. Businesspeople 

sometimes do, but people 

who are makers don’t really care. 

I discovered something doing Robots 

and Pencils: I think most people who 

are in the capital business do not know 

how to build great companies. Because 

my past companies always had financing, 

I thought that was how you did 

it—get the funding first. I didn’t realize 

that building a great team and having 

money aren’t connected at all. They’re 

two different objectives. My objective 

is to build an amazing company, one 

that attracts the best people in the 

world to come and share in the rewards. 

For venture capitalists, it’s like, 

“I’ve got a 10-year window on my fund 

and I need to reach a certain internal 

rate of return for my limited partner.” 

That said, Robots and Pencils is a very 

successful company. The growth numbers 

are crazy—an 84-percent cumulative 

annual growth rate over five years, 

or 4,971 percent total. It works. We 

have no debt, no financing, fast-growing 

revenue and a good bottom line. 

As for hiring, people are our most 

So far, Robots 

and Pencils has 

developed more 

than 250 apps 

that have been 

downloaded by 

more than 77 

million people. 

“ 

If you follow the 

talent, you get an 

unfair share 

of hyper-talented 

people. 

important assets. I don’t think about 

having staff; I think about having 

talent. I call it FTT: Follow the Talent. 

We find pockets of talented people, 

and that’s where we build an office. 

It gives us access to an unfair share of 

hyper-talented people. Take our managing 

director in Winnipeg: He can’t 

move for personal reasons, but he is so 

good, he attracts people who want to 

work with him. We had to either build 

an office around him or not work with 

him—those were our only two options. 

So now we have an office in Winnipeg, 

two offices in the U.S.—Austin and 

Denver—and one in London. We’ll be 

coming to Toronto soon, too. 

When I talk to someone who has 

talent, I’m very straightforward that 

I need a 10-year commitment. That’s 

very awkward. People think I’m 

crazy. But if you’re building something 

compelling, it automatically 

must also be repelling. There will be 

people who love it, and there should 

be people who hate it. The reason we 

need to work together for a long time 

is so that we can follow you and watch 

ideas emerge. PencilCase and Spy vs 

Spy both emerged from the talent, not 

from the management. My job is to let 

talent feel free to have these thoughts. 

To support this, we avoid internal silos. 

We don’t care about the vertical— 

we’re vertical-agnostic. If you think 

about amazing innovation, people are 

always talking about it being cross-disciplinary 

or interdisciplinary, but 

everyone ends up going into their silos. 

The breakthrough comes when the 

finance person talks to the physicist. 

We want to stay in breakthrough 

mode all the time. We’re just at the 

beginning of our story. Our vision is to 

be at least a 100-year-old company. I 

actually want it to be 1,429 years old, 

because then Robots and Pencils will 

be the oldest company on the planet. ■ 

According to 

the Guinness 

Book of World 

Records, the 

oldest business 

in the world is 

the Nisiyama 

Onsen Keiunkan, 

a hot-spring 

hotel in Japan—it 

was founded in 

705 A.D. and has 

been run by the 

same family for 

52 generations.

Follow the talent

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