Bio

Krenar Komoni is an entrepreneur that has developed breakthrough ideas in transportation, logistics, wireless electronics, and data analytics for nearly a decade. As an innovator and market leader, he has successfully developed and led cross-functional teams while enhancing business performance in sales, finance, supply chain logistics, distribution, and manufacturing. Most recently, Krenar founded the global supply chain visibility company, Tive, headquartered in Boston, that provides a cloud-based platform and IoT sensors to capture critical real-time ground-truth data of shipments throughout the globe. Krenar embodies the leadership, management, and vision necessary to deliver market innovation, drive growth, and unlock hidden potential. Previously, Krenar worked at BitWave Semiconductor, developing the world’s first software-defined radio (SDR), Eta Devices, an MIT-based startup developing highly efficient cellular base stations, and has provided consulting services for various Fortune 500 companies on chip and system-level wireless design.

Intro

Krenar Komoni, the founder and CEO of Tive, joins us to elucidate the transformative impact of real-time tracking technology on supply chain visibility. His journey from an immigrant in Kosovo to a successful entrepreneur in Massachusetts exemplifies the resilience and determination inherent in the immigrant founder experience. Throughout our discussion, Krenar recounts the pivotal moments that shaped his entrepreneurial path, including the near-bankruptcy of Tive with only $20,000 left in the bank and the profound influence of his mother's courage as a war reporter. He shares insights into how Tive's innovative smart trackers provide comprehensive monitoring for shipments globally, revolutionizing the logistics industry. Join us for an inspiring conversation that highlights the intersection of technology and tenacity in the face of adversity.

Story

Krenar Komoni's narrative is a profound exploration of resilience, innovation, and the entrepreneurial spirit, as he shares his journey from Kosovo to becoming a leader in supply chain technology through his company, Tive. The discussion is rich with insights into the genesis of Tive, spurred by Krenar's recognition of the need for sophisticated tracking solutions in an increasingly interconnected world. He articulates the technical foundations of Tive's products, which are designed to function autonomously in diverse environments, thereby eliminating the complexities associated with traditional tracking methods. Krenar's storytelling is laced with personal anecdotes, particularly the influence of his mother's courage and adaptability during tumultuous times, which shaped his own approach to challenges in the business landscape. The episode culminates in a reflection on the pivotal moments that tested Krenar's resolve, particularly during a financial crisis that nearly led to the company's demise. His unwavering commitment to his vision and the lessons gleaned from both triumphs and tribulations serve as an inspiring blueprint for entrepreneurs navigating their paths.

Takeaways

• Krenar Komoni elucidates the transformative journey from Kosovo to becoming an accomplished entrepreneur in Massachusetts, exemplifying the immigrant founder's narrative.
• At TIVE, Krenar developed innovative smart trackers that provide real-time monitoring of shipments, revolutionizing supply chain visibility across diverse industries.
• Krenar's resilience was profoundly influenced by his mother's courage and resourcefulness as a war reporter, shaping his entrepreneurial grit.
• During TIVE's most challenging phase, Krenar faced near bankruptcy, yet his unwavering belief in the company's mission propelled him to seek solutions and persevere.
• Krenar recognized the importance of building technology that anticipates future trends, ensuring TIVE's relevance as chipsets evolve towards IoT applications.
• The elimination of infrastructure barriers was pivotal for TIVE, allowing the company to provide standalone tracking solutions without the need for additional equipment.

Links

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/komoni

Tive https://www.tive.com

Leave us a review: https://podchaser.com/DesigningSuccessfulStartups

Jothy’s book: https://www.amazon.com/Tech-Startup-Toolkit-launch-strong/dp/1633438422/

Site with podcasts: https://jothyrosenberg.com/podcast

YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DesigningSuccessfulStartups

Jothy’s non-profit: https://whosaysicant.org

Jothy’s TEDx talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNtOawXAx5A

Foreign Rosenberg, the host of Designing Successful Startups, where today's guest is Kranar Komoni.

SIM card providers realize there's so many devices going from across countries that they needed all these roaming agreements to happen.

And timing was also perfect.

SIM cards on chips.

That was when I started time.

I was like, I have to do it right now.

I cannot wait because it just, it's, it's going to be perfect.

So we have one SIM card there that works all over the world.

And is there a.

So is there an account essentially for each device?

Each device has a unique IMEI number, unique SIM card number.

We have obviously one global account where we see all the devices and then this major network operator.

There's also major virtual network operators.

We work with a major network operator and this major network operator has roaming agreements with, I believe, almost 200.

We dive deep into the journeys of innovative founders who are transforming industries through grit, vision and relentless execution.

Today we're joined by Kranara Komoni, founder and CEO of tive, a company revolutionizing supply chain visibility with real time tracking technology.

From his childhood in Kosovo to becoming an entrepreneur in Massachusetts, Kranar's story exemplifies the immigrant founder journey.

After being rejected by MIT three times, he ironically ended up working closely with MIT professors and becoming the first employee at an MIT professor's startup.

Now at tive, Krenar has created smart trackers that provide real time location and condition monitoring for shipments across the globe, from strawberries to servers to Pokemon cards.

In this episode, Kernar shares how he navigated near bankruptcy with just $20,000 left in the bank, the origin of the four letter company name, and profound influence his mother's courage as a war reporter had on his entrepreneurial resilience.

Join us for an inspiring conversation about building technology that's changing how the world's goods move from point A to point B and.

Hello Krinnar.

Welcome to the podcast.

Hey, Jyoti, Great seeing you.

Great to see you.

I did not know before where you were from.

So I'm going to ask you to talk here about where you're originally from and also where you live now.

Well, I'm originally from Kosovo.

I grew up there until I was 17 years old and then came to United States to study.

I went to high school as an exchange student and then college and masters.

Now I live in Massachusetts.

That's my home now actually, as you're hot to say something because every time I think people should figure out where their home is when they land in an Airport.

And every time I land to Logan, I'm like, wow, this is my home.

It's just.

I can go any other airport.

Doesn't matter whether it's Kosovo or anywhere.

But when I land into Logan, I just.

I feel like that's my home.

So do you.

Have you ever heard of the.

The brand of stationary bike called a peloton?

Yeah.

Okay, so I have one.

One.

I do not have one, but, yeah, I have.

I have one.

And.

And Tuesday mornings is when I do my peloton workout.

And this morning, it's total coincidence.

I don't take their classes.

I do their scenic rides, and I always just pick the next one.

And the next one was.

It was Kosovo, and it was the.

It was Paja Paya.

Yeah, that's how.

Oh, my God, that's so funny.

So I rode through this beautiful countryside, very mountainous, for 45 minutes this morning, getting in the mood to talk to you.

And completely random.

That's awesome.

Completely random.

It was the epitome of random.

That's meant to be.

It is a very mountainous country.

Is the whole country pretty mountainous?

What's interesting is the.

If you look at Kosovo and you look at the map, it's quite flat and right in the center, but it's surrounded by mountains.

It's almost like.

Like it was.

It was created that way to be protected.

To be protective.

Yeah.

And.

And so I imagine the biggest cities are in that.

In that middle section, then.

They're.

Yeah, they're all in the middle section.

Yeah.

And I grew up in the capital, Pristina.

That's where I.

That's where you grew up.

Yeah.

But you left there fairly.

Fairly young.

If you came over to the States to go to high school.

Yeah.

17 years old.

And then went to see, as a senior to high school up in Vermont.

Northfield High School.

Where'd you go?

I went to Tufts University.

Oh, Tufts.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, for my.

And I.

And my undergrad, I did it.

Well, I'll tell you the MIT story, though.

Here's.

Maybe I.

I've never told this story, but when I applied to Norwich University, this was an undergrad.

It was.

Right.

It was in Northfield, Vermont, where I went to high school.

So I applied to Norwich, and the other school I applied to was mit.

I only applied to two schools for my undergraduate, and I didn't get into mit.

And then for my master's, I wanted to do my master's, I applied to Tufts University, and then I applied to, I think, a few other.

Maybe two other ones, but I also applied to MIT and I didn't get into MIT.

I live for my PhD.

I applied to Tufts, I applied to UC Berkeley, Stanford, but I also applied to MIT and I didn't get into mit.

So three times, three times I didn't get to mit.

But the funny thing is I work for this company called Bitwave Semiconductor and we built the world's first software defined radio in a chip.

2G, 3G, 4G radio.

And one of the professors there was an MIT professor that was helping us design chipsets and look into the next technology and where MIT professors would come to talk.

It was a really cool company.

When this MIT professor, Joel Dawson started a new startup called ETA Devices, he was the, I was the first one he called to join as the first employee at his startup.

And then I went to mit, went to his lab, went to this other professor's, Dave Perot's lab and they really liked me and I joined this company called ETA Devices and we built the world's most efficient base stations.

So I was, I'm worked a lot with MIT people and surrounded by mit.

But never mind the school, there, there's.

A, there's another way to say this, that MIT people have realized the errors of their school and they keep wanting to work with you and bring you over and, and have you pretend that you went to MIT so that they'll feel better.

Yeah.

And one of my board members is also an MIT Red.

So there we go.

So we share an investor.

So Hyperplane invested in both companies.

Hopefully you give them a better return.

I don't, I don't think I'm going to give them that greater return on this one.

We'll see.

But we're talking to buyers now.

I think, I think they're, they're definitely a 20 or 30x since seed precede for you.

Yeah, yeah.

Well they should invest in more non MIT grads then from now on that's proof.

Your startup that Hyperplane has invested in is tive.

Maybe you could tell us first of all where the name come from and what is the, the company.

Yeah, so maybe I'll answer the second one first because I think it, you know, is easier to answer the second first one second.

So what we do at TIVE is pretty straightforward.

We help companies all over the world understand and track their shipments.

Everything that moves from point A to point B, we are involved and help companies track their shipments.

And the way we do that is we've created these trackers right here.

All they do is press a button, put this Tracker inside of a trailer, inside of a container, usually on the last pallet.

So there's maybe 20 pallets inside of a container or a trailer.

And it could be strawberries, could be servers, could be Pokemon cards, could be anything there.

And then you take this tracker, they press a button, put it on the top of the pallet, close the door.

And then real time, they get information of where the shipment is.

Very accurate location, but also the condition.

Is it hot, is it cold, is it wet?

Did somebody open the trailer?

Because there is a light sensor that can tell them.

And this connects to 2G, 3G, 4G connectivity all over the globe.

And it also sends all that information in real time.

So they can open up our software.

We have a software platform that it's very intuitive and they can see all of that information.

But the way I came up with a name was I really wanted a name that is simple.

This is.

I incorporated it.

So we're talking like two weeks before.

I'm trying to find the name.

And I had a small prototype that I had built.

And I was thinking, first I wanted a four letter name because three letters is like an architecture firm or a law firm.

Five letters was too much, in my opinion.

Or six.

Two names was too much like Dropbox or GitHub or GitLab or.

It just felt like two.

There was a lot of companies did a great job with two names, but I felt the time was like four letters similar, like Dell, Lego, Lyft, Uber, ikea.

I mean, talk about the biggest four.

The biggest names of four letters.

I'm like, I'm gonna make a four letter company name.

And when I had this prototype in my hand, I was.

I still remember driving, I think it was on 990, going from like Boston to Worcester because I was commuting quite a bit.

I'm like, what does this thing do?

And the words that came to my mind were active, intuitive, sensitive, quantitative.

And I'm like, oh, they all have the same suffix.

I've tive, tive, tiv, tiv, tiv.

But I'm like, nobody's going to call it tiv, so I'm going to call it Tithe.

It's like this high five live.

Tive Hive.

So that's it.

That's how I came with the name.

Is it tive.com?

It is now.

So when I started the company, it was Tive IO and then Tive Co and tive.com was always taken.

And it was this.

When I raised the first round.

The Series A.

Not the first round.

When we did $12 million at the, the Series A round.

I told Raju, the MIT grad, I'm like, Listen, I think I can get time.com, but it's going to cost us.

They.

He wants 300,000, but I think I can get it for 150.

He's like, okay, let's get it.

So this guy was in France, in like south of France somewhere.

And my wife speaks a little French, so I had my wife negotiating with him in French and he was so, like, flaky, it was really difficult to communicate with him.

And we, I got my lawyers, we signed some paperwork and he didn't want cash.

I had to buy a domain name, which I can't, I won't tell you the name of.

I had to buy that domain name and I had to do a Swap to get tive.com and that's how it happened.

But we got it.

You were still a startup and willing to invest 150,000 for the name.

Oh, I believe the, I believe, I believe in the name so much.

No, I, I don't, I don't mean the name.

I mean the.com versus IO.

I think it makes a huge difference in the world if somebody just Googles Tive now.

If they usually spontaneously, they just go to tive.com.

they don't want.

I know that's true.

I have a couple questions about how the technology works.

So when RFID first came out, people were talking about how it was going to be the thing you would glue to the pallets and it was going to be so cheap.

But of.

Because it's passive, it can't do any of the computing that you're talking about.

It can only basically say, I'm here.

You had to walk this fine line between, okay, that doesn't give you much functionality versus cost and complexity of your device.

I'm sure because you'd worked in hardware before, you had a pretty good sense of that.

How did you think about.

Did you decide what the functionality had to be first or did you say, okay, this is the largest, the most power that will survive these kinds of trips?

Well, how did you come at it?

That's a very, very good.

So I think I had one thing that maybe as a founder coming into this industry advantage that maybe others didn't have.

So coming from that chip design background, I had a view on where LTE chipsets were going.

It was 4G, very power hungry, very expensive, obviously Intel, Qualcomm, or kind of the only two companies making that LTE chip.

But I knew that there are new releases of LTE chip that were coming in the future that would be lower cost, lower power and only focused for Internet of things communication.

So it was called LT Iot and then it got changed to CAT M.

One being a little more specific in this podcast here, so I could tell where that future was going.

The other thing, while at mit, I also met other folks who were part of this RFID program with Walmart.

Like, you're right, it was a huge thing.

I'm going to put it on every single pallet.

And Walmart mandated Everybody to put RFIDs.

But what I realized there was that the challenge that it never proliferated was because of infrastructure.

Like RFIDs are great, but you needed this infrastructure all over every store, every warehouse, every distribution center to be able to get in, when it came in, when it got out, you need to be 100% reliable.

If there was 10 RFIDs, you couldn't just read eight, you had to read 10.

There was no interference like you had.

So there was so many challenges.

Yeah, they give up on that.

So there was two things that then I made a decision when I started Tyre, I said obviously this industry needed to track shipments.

I said to myself, one, I could see where LTE was going and two, I will never, ever build a product that requires a gateway.

I want a fully standalone product that is active.

We're going to figure out how to make it very cost effective and it's gonna take time.

And finally we got here.

But I want it to be standalone so this can be thrown anywhere in the globe.

It will automatically connect to a tower.

It'll automatically sense everything by itself.

There is no need for a gateway, there is no need for a router.

It's, that's, that's the, that's, that also has its own power, right?

And that how can you connect to a tower without that device having, you know, an account with Verizon or somebody?

SIM card providers realized there's so many devices going from across countries that they needed all these roaming agreements to happen.

And timing was also perfect, right?

SIM cards on chips on.

That was when I started time.

I was like, I have to do it right now.

I cannot wait.

Because it just, it's going to be perfect.

So we have one SIM card there that works all over the world.

So is there an account essentially for each device?

Each device has a unique IMEI number, unique SIM card number.

We have obviously one global account where we see all the devices.

And then this major network operator.

There is also major virtual network operators.

We work with a major network operator.

And this major network operator has roaming agreements with I believe almost 200 countries.

They don't even call countries.

There's territories because it's not many countries in the world.

And with almost 500 plus different carriers all over the world that we can connect to 2G 4G anywhere.

We are those of us with just regular phones, we'll go into dead zones.

The town next to me doesn't seem to like cell phone towers.

Lincoln and there are going to be places.

There are.

I assume that it just keeps trying.

Is that right?

Right.

So a couple of things.

One, because of the shape of the device and I don't know if I have one that's open actually.

So you can see this antenna right here.

We've done a lot of work on the antenna to be able to work almost a little, I would say better than a phone.

Phone has some kind of limitations when it comes to size and everything.

Here we've done an antenna that's perfect for the bands that we want so that he can go.

If it's not in Lincoln, Mass.

Maybe it can connect to a tower that's further away.

However, there are dead zones.

And in the dead zones what happens is the tracker will store the data.

So if it senses temperature, humidity, light, it will store it.

It will try transmitted.

But if it can't, it will store it and can store it for many days because we have a pretty big memory in here.

And then when it gets to the next hour, it will upload all that data with timestamps.

So it's pretty, pretty straightforward.

And it happens quite a bit, by the way, in the ocean.

I was about.

Middle of the ocean.

Yeah.

How does it work in the ocean?

So the middle of the ocean we connect maybe even a mile away.

Sometimes when the vessel leaves, because it's at the port, you have cellular towers.

Once it's in the middle of the ocean, there are no cell towers.

So we'll store all that data for days and then upload it to the next port.

However, the customer wants to know the real time location of the vessel and there are ways to get that real time location of the vessel because we partner with vessels with shipping lines and they know where all those vessels are, we figure out based on the container number that the customer gives us, which container, the, which vessel the container is on.

And then we can show in real time the vessel.

And when it gets to the other side of the port, we can start uploading all that data and show real time using the tracker.

And sometimes what happens with customers, that's why they love the tracker, is they say, hey, the vessel left, but the tracker's still showing at the port of, I don't know, Long beach or la, or like it hasn't moved.

And then customers like, oh my God, my container didn't even make it on the vessel.

So suddenly they can now call the shipping line, get it to the next vessel and be able to save.

Sometimes customers who don't know that they can waste days.

Well, if it's a port, if it's a whole truckload of bananas, they better get it moving quickly.

Yeah, definitely.

Or yeah, is it able to tell on a, on a, one of the huge container ships, there are probably 700 that are, have refrigeration in the boxes.

And if the refrigeration fails, there's a lot of money that's getting lost, if it's frozen salmon or if it's even bananas.

I actually did a little startup that was, that was trying to help them predict when these units would fail.

Oh, wow.

Based on their long history of, okay, the oil was changed on this date.

And it turns out these things fail this many weeks or months after the oil was changed.

They can't tell if it fails.

But you could, I mean, your device would be able to tell.

Yeah, so I mean, the, the, the, the vessel usually has like a panel.

They can tell where everything's plugged and if, if there's a failure on the power side and they can get that information right to make sure.

But sometimes there's a couple of things that could happen.

One, they forget to plug it while they're waiting maybe to load, and suddenly the refrigeration unit is not plugged into power.

The second one, which is also common is the setting could be wrong.

Like we had a customer supposed to be at negative four, but they didn't see the negative.

So the person who set the setting on the reefer just put four instead of negative four.

And suddenly the, that was a big difference in this case was Celsius.

Instead of negative four, they, they put four Celsius freezing.

I mean, the, the person, the vessel doesn't know, like it's plugged in, it's fine, everything is good.

It can't tell the negative.

Sometimes people forget that.

But because our settings on the track, because our settings on our software say it should be at negative four.

Hey, somebody put it at four.

Suddenly you get an alarm.

And they were able to call the logistics company and resolve the issue within like a, within 30 minutes or so or an hour and they were able to save a shipment.

This was a while back when I started the company.

And there's cases like this that's happened quite a bit.

Human error.

Hi.

The podcast you are listening to is a companion to my recent book, Tech Startup Toolkit, how to Launch Strong and Exit Big.

This is the book I wish I'd had as I was founding and running eight startups over 35 years.

I tell the unvarnished truth about what went right and especially about what went wrong.

You could get it from all the usual booksellers.

I hope you like it.

It's a true labor of love.

Now back to the show.

The devices that you just had in your hand, that device, they're cute.

They're beautiful.

Yeah, they're always chocolates.

Sometimes like, oh, it should be chocolate.

Anyways, what's the business model for the customers?

They sign up for a contract with you.

They're going to buy a certain number of those units.

You're going to make a lot more money off of the monitoring service than you are off of the hardware.

Is that a good guess?

So it's funny, we.

It's maybe single digit, maybe around 5% of customers.

We monitor their shipments.

Oh, they want to do it themselves.

They do it themselves.

We have 975 custom.

Almost a thousand.

We're going to get to a thousand here in the next 30 days.

So do you sell them the software by the, you know, enterprise wide model or what?

Yeah, we have three tiers, plus premium, essential.

Depending on the tier and what they need, and depending on the volume of trackers, they pay a software fee and then they commit to.

And they buy those trackers, they turn them on, they put them in shipment.

Usually they use them only once.

At the end of the shipment.

We will work with them to recycle them and we give you credit.

If they can reuse the trackers, they will actually recharge the tracker and reuse it themselves.

And they pay a monthly or yearly fee if they want to use the tracker.

But there's a software fee and a single use tracker fee that they pay.

But it's at the end when they blend it.

You divide that by number of shipments, the whole thing, and you look at it, how much it costs per shipment.

It's still very, very lucrative for, for businesses to know where their stuff is.

You've got this, you know, the investors, of course, love this.

The annual recurring revenue from the devices and, and you're going to be charging them an annual fee on the software at the very least.

For, for maintenance, there's software and the people who reuse the trackers, that is a hundred percent recurring revenue, like definitely ARR.

I also call that almost ARR.

But it's highly, highly reoccurrent has like an NRR of net retention, net revenue retention of 130%.

It just the nature at which they buy and shipping.

Right.

It's very recurring.

Is it almost always a truckload or one of those big boxes that goes on the ships?

That's the size that it's signed to today.

I would say yes, that's.

I would say 95% of the case, maybe 90% of the cases is a full truckload, full container load.

In life science and pharma, usually it's per package because the value of the package is larger, bigger, and they put them on every single package.

But most of it is full truckload for container load.

Obviously the cost of these are going to go down with time.

Like that's the business we're in.

Yeah, that's one thing that we follow very, very closely.

Where chipsets are going, where manufacturing is going.

As this becomes lower cost, people are going to put it on every single pallet after every single pallet they put in every item.

It's just a matter of time, Jo.

It's just a matter of time.

So this all sounds like everything's gone according to plan, but I got to ask, what's a really difficult moment in the, in the life of tive?

So far, nothing goes to plan.

Yes.

Maybe if you zoom out completely and you at a decade of work, I would say it's gone quite well.

But then if you do the micro weeks and days and months and minutes and hours, nothing goes to plan.

I could see we only had, I don't know, not much money in the bank.

So I had to go from 16 people or so down to eight.

And we're like, we're gonna figure out how to survive.

And then we went down to.

And that time, like, was the most, I would say, in the last two months of that time or a month of that time between May, June, July was the most difficult time of, I would say time, but also my life because I.

And, and she was going through a lot during that time.

Watching that and trying to make the company survive was.

Was quite challenging.

I'm sure I had the.

That was the real test for me and for the business.

And one thing that I was telling myself, well, I think it's a good test for every founder and entrepreneur is I was able to say yes to this question.

If the company went bankrupt, would I figure out a way to buy it back from the investors and start it again?

And for me, the answer was yes, I'll go in these long runs and trying to, like, picture the world and where it's going to be and what we're going to do with this company.

And it just.

The answer is always a resounding yes.

During that month, I talked to 150 investors, angel investors, VCs, buyers, just anyone I could, I could find and found this guy, Martin Hubert, was the CEO of company called Freightgate.

He decided to put a hundred thousand on a secured note.

Like if I failed, he would own the whole company.

And my current investors agreed because they were like, there was no other choice.

So we signed that.

And then after that I kept raising more on that note.

The note was half the valuation of the previous round.

So that hurt me quite a bit on dilution personally, but it was definitely the right thing.

I actually had an opportunity to out of the ashes of one company that really met its demise in disastrous way.

There was IP that we had developed.

I said to the investors, basically, how much would you sell me that IP for?

And they said, a million.

And then summary, somebody on the board said to another member, I think he's trying to flip it.

He's going to get it for a million and he's going to be able to sell it for two, so we should raise the price to two.

And I said, you guys got to be kidding me.

I went to the lawyers who were doing the liquidation for the Benefit of creditors.

And I said, how much could I get the patents directly from you?

And she said, oh, if you wait three weeks, I'm sure no one will want them.

You can have them for $65,000.

There we go.

And I did.

And the next company, seven years later, sold for $125 million.

Wow.

Amazing.

In my case, I didn't do that, obviously.

So all my.

Yeah.

So my early investors are very, very happy.

You're in much better shape throughout this whole time.

And for your previous companies, like all startups, you had to have grit.

I know you had a lot of sleepless nights, but you still had to have grit to do these things.

And I would love to know what's your grit story?

Where did it come from?

Oh, that's.

I think it comes from my mom, now that I think a little bit about it live on this show.

She is person with the most grit I've ever known in my life.

So growing up in Kosovo, they.

We were Albanians, so they took.

It was.

It was tough.

They took everybody out of jobs.

My mom lost her job.

She was a radio reporter.

She would do news in the mornings in the radio.

She figured out a way how to, I don't know, a few weeks later, get on a radio, on a Turkish radio and speak a different language and get a job at a radio in Turkey and obviously report about what was happening Kosovo from our home, from our house.

She would be on the phone.

She figured out how to make money that way.

And then she figured out how to open.

She.

She studied English and Albanian language.

So that was her master's and.

And her undergrad.

And she.

In our kitchen, she set up a kitchen table, and we would bring students my age, like I was, I don't know, 10 years old.

We would sit there, six some.

We would sit in the.

In the kitchen, and she would teach us English.

And they would pay, I don't know, maybe $10 a month or $5 a month.

And she figured out how to make money.

She's the real entrepreneur with a lot of grit.

And just watching my mom being in the worst position, right?

As a.

As a human with no job, have no opportunities to be able to create out opportunities out of thin air, out of nothing.

Just with that willingness, I was like, if she can do it, I need to learn from her.

And I could do anything.

Like, I should go get a job.

But you have this belief that I just got to keep going another day, another day, another day.

And that concept of one day at a time and never giving up.

And just.

I think of my mom a lot of times throughout my, my life.

And she's, she's the reason why I'm great.

That's like, like a lot of, a lot of founders there are.

That was an amazing story about grit and I really, I admire that.

She was also a war reporter.

So during the war she would go in areas, but literally maybe close to Payo or some other areas where there's just war happening.

And she would record live videos, always happening, and report and they would take it, then ship it to Turkey and then Turkey would play it live.

And I think she had a big impact on telling the world what was happening in Kosovo.

But that's, that's a lot of bravery, I think, beyond mine.

How many kids was she raising?

Me and my brother 16 months younger.

Yeah.

And raising two kids.

Pretty cool.

Pretty amazing.

Great woman.

Well, thanks for telling that story type.

Sounds great.

Your progress so far is impressive.

I think it's a safe bet for me to say the hardest days are behind you.

No, don't worry.

Knock on wood.

Yeah, there's always going to be challenges, right?

But these are scaling challenges and bigger challenges.

I think we're now the largest real time tracking company in the world when it comes to inside shipments.

And to get here has been.

It's been fun and I think where it's going, it's even more fun.

Awesome.

Well, thanks very much for doing this.

Appreciate your coming on here.

Thank you so much.

I really enjoyed it.

Now your founders Toolkit takeaways Takeaway one vision beyond current technology Great founders can see where technology is heading before others.

Krinnar knew LTE chipsets would become smaller, cheaper and more power efficient for IoT applications.

By anticipating this trend, he designed a product that seemed ambitious at the time, but became increasingly feasible as the technology evolved.

Always build for where the technology curve is going, not where it is today.

Takeaway to solve infrastructure problems with standalone solutions when entering a market with previous failed attempts, analyze why those attempts didn't work.

Krinnar recognized that RFID tracking failed because it required extensive infrastructure.

By creating a standalone device that works anywhere without gateways or additional equipment, Tive eliminated adoption barriers.

The best solutions require minimal infrastructure change while delivering maximum value.

Takeaway 3 the ultimate founder test during Tive's darkest moment, with only $20,000 left in the bank.

Krennar asked himself, if this company went bankrupt, would I buy it back from investors and start again?

When your answer is an immediate yes, you've found a mission worth fighting for.

This level of conviction carries you through the inevitable valleys of the startup journey.

Inherited grit Kernar's resilience came from watching his mother create opportunities from nothing during difficult times in Kosovo, she taught English from the kitchen table and became a war reporter to support the family.

Look to your personal history for sources of grit and determination.

Often our greatest entrepreneurial strengths come from witnessing how others overcame adversity before us.

The show notes contain useful resources and links.

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This is Jothi Rosenberg saying TTFN Tata for now.