Bringing Wireless Internet to Rural Areas in Texas

Interview with Matthew Johnson, founder of ClearBadger based in San Antonio, TX.

“I enlisted in the US Navy in 2015 at the age of 20. I was previously attending the University of NV, Reno for Neuroscience. I had switched majors a dozen times (so it felt) and I hated every one of them more than the last. I was falling apart physically and mentally. I dropped out and for six months just worked seasonal jobs in Reno and Lake Tahoe. After enlisting, I was eventually stationed in San Antonio. I decided to move to a rural area just outside of town. Upon moving in, I discovered the woes of the rural internet. Unsatisfied with satellite internet, I sold some vehicles, borrowed some money, drained my savings and paid for a fiber line to be run to my house. This was (read: is) prohibitively expensive, around 2,000 USD/month. After some research, I started my WISP, ClearBadger Wireless. The thing that was missing in my life was having control over it.

The key validation moment of my idea has to be when I got my first customer online after several days of trying. I was working 40 hours a week for the Navy, and working another 60 on my company, and I had no idea what I was doing. I was alone, with the wrong tools, watching youtube tutorials on my phone on a strangers roof in Texas heat. I got that guy online (he was very patient) and it took a few more visits to hammer out the details, but when I got him a good connection way out in the boonies he was just so blown away, and I knew that what I was doing was good for me and for the community as a whole.

There have been many challenges up to this point. I have learned that startup businesses are very hot and cold, especially run by newbies. It seemed like every other week we had something huge that was either going to make or break us, but it always turned out to be somewhere in the middle. Most recently I had my main tower knocked over by a storm, and I thought it was the end of my company, but we put our heads together and got 90% of the network back up by the end of the day, and the tower rebuilt by the end of the following week. One thing I wish I knew was that businesses don’t have to be perfect to be good. I am stronger now because I understand that there is almost always a solution, and most things that seem impossible or very difficult become very easy once you get started.

Since the start of COVID-19, we actually had an explosion of signups, so much so we struggled to keep equipment in stock. We went from around 100 to over 150 customers in 3 months. We had to decide what safety measures we would take, and resorted to not entering customer homes. We would install outside, poke pre terminated cable through the house and leave a router on their doorstep, then test the wifi from outside.

My biggest inspiration has always been my father. He was already successful and 50 years old when I was born. He fought in Vietnam and came back with 100$. He worked his way from mechanic to CEO at a Fortune 500 RV company. He had a lot of shortcomings as a father that he (and I) struggled with, but he taught me the lessons and the mindset required to be an ambitious entrepreneur. I admired him because anytime there was an issue he refused to become frantic (my mother, not so much) and he would just break the issue down into multiple smaller tasks and just start cracking away without changing demeanor at all. He taught me that there are only two kinds of problems in the world: some you can do something about and some that you cannot. Why worry about either?

To anyone who is just starting out from scratch, my advice would be:

1. PRICE HIGH. So many companies come out with amazing products or services, and their first instinct is always to try and undercut their competition on price. If your product/service is premium, CHARGE PREMIUM RATES. It’s so easy to lower pricing for a sales bump than it is to justify a higher price to existing customers so I recommend at the very least doubling your first instinct when setting prices. If it’s too high, lowering will only help you. If it’s too low, raising prices will be painful, especially if your business is subscription based like mine. Maybe people are willing to pay 3x what you were initially going to price at, make sure to give them a chance to do so! )
2. THERE IS ALWAYS MORE ROOM IN A MARKET. Your business doesn’t have to be unique, clever, flashy, trendy, or original. I know 9 millionaires personally, including my father. They made their money doing: accounting services, trash company, making RV siding, business consulting, real estate management, landscaping, business management lectures for corporate events, a shipping company, a construction company, etc. Sure, there are famous people like Elon Musk who make their money from revolutionizing industries, but the vast majority of successful companies just do a slightly better job than their local competitors. Chrome is used by 2 billion people worldwide, but Opera, Firefox, and IE are still worth millions, if not billions of dollars.
3. ALWAYS GET IT IN WRITING. Any time you are looking at a deal of any kind, do some research into how people get burned doing it. Plenty of people have fallen into any given pitfall, no need to jump in after them. CYA, folks!”

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