Bootstrapped, Profitable, and Proud: SparkFun
Check out this interview with SparkFun CEO Nate Seidle.
SparkFun certainly comes from humble roots - namely our CEO Nate Seidle's grungy college apartment (I'm taking some creative liberties here - I have no idea if it was actually "grungy" or not, but if it was anything like my college apartment, it certainly was!). Anyways, things have certainly changed a lot in the last 8-ish years.
Add about 10 or so people to this and you have where SparkFun currently stands.
SparkFun has grown from a college student's solution for hard to find parts to an "electronics enabler" employing over 100 people in departments like engineering, production, shipping, customer service, tech support, marketing communications, inventory, and HR. It has been a really wild ride and the changes SparkFun has gone through have been nothing short of amazing.
Our fearless leader, Nathan Seidle.
If you are interested in SparkFun's roots and how, exactly, we got where we are, here's a nice interview with SparkFun Founder and CEO Nate Seidle from the 37Signals blog. In the article, Nate talks about his initial business "strategy," where we find SparkFun now, and where he sees us going in the future. He also offers some advice for those trying to start their own business and addresses some of the difficulties and challenges one will face.
If you want to learn a bit about our history, give the article a read. You can also leave some feedback in the comments on the article (or here, for that matter) and we will try to answer them as best we can. Cheers!
