Tile Leaders on the Company’s Bold Vision and Why People Matter Most
In Fall 2019, Tile launched an entire new product lineup; opened an office in Vancouver, British Columbia; and announced a Great Place to Work certification. It’s been a busy year. The company is known for making “Tiles,” small Bluetooth devices you can use to find your belongings, from car keys to medication. But behind the scenes, the team is adapting its core technology to integrate with any Bluetooth device and serve hundreds of use cases. The vision? Deliver peace of mind by creating a world where everything that matters can be found.
To learn more, we spoke with Tile CEO CJ Prober and VP of People and Workplace Lissa Minkin. Below, they expand on Tile’s massive opportunities beyond hardware, forthcoming partnerships with giants like Google and Comcast, and an approach to culture that rivals companies 10 times their size.
Take us through the past, present, and future of what Tile makes.
CJ: Tile started out in 2013 as a key and phone finder. You attach a Tile to your keys and use the mobile app to find them, or press the Tile to find your phone. It was designed to address a small portion of a much larger pain point that we all share, which is losing stuff. On average, each of us spends a year of our life looking for things that have been misplaced or stolen.
Today, Tile makes multiple products, including a slim version that fits in a wallet or passport and a sticker you can attach to anything from your bike to your remote. We’ve also added software to Tile-enable third-party products with bluetooth, like headphones, and we’re expanding into other verticals soon: just think of anything you’d like to keep track of, and imagine Tile’s technology built in.
There will be about 30 billion Bluetooth devices in the market within a few years, so that’s exciting in itself. But there are also lots of things that don’t have Bluetooth but that we want to be findable, from kids’ retainers to jewelry boxes to luggage. So now we’re working on building our hardware into those products as well. At the highest level, our vision is to give our customers peace of mind. We want everything you care about to be findable with Tile.
Why did you decide to join Tile?
Lissa: I wanted to be in a place with a lot of positive energy, and I could tell people here were happy to come to work. It seemed like the team felt connected to what they were building and genuinely excited about the problems they were solving.
And Tile is growing so quickly right now that I knew I could have a big impact, which is really important to me. Why would I go somewhere just to be a cog in the wheel? Ultimately, I saw the potential to be a part of something amazing and decided to go for it.
CJ: I was on the board for about eight months before I joined as CEO, so I already knew Tile had a great product. They’d been smart early on. When the company launched, Bluetooth was just gaining traction, and there were a lot of competitors in the market. But Tile set itself apart with the Community Find feature, for those moments when a lost item cannot be detected by ringing. Once an item is marked as lost, if any member of the Tile Community spots the missing item, the owner is notified with its location. That creates a powerful network effect; we’re now over 90% market share in the U.S.
“Why would I go somewhere to be a cog in the wheel? Here I knew I would be a part of something amazing.” — Lissa
I’d also seen how passionate customers were about Tile — we have thousands of Tile Tales to prove it. It was super clear that the company had product-market fit and was already a great foundational brand and business. Being able to build on that success was exciting. And I saw the CEO role as an opportunity to create a culture that met my own expectations — a place I’d want to call home for a long time.
Tell us more about the culture you’re building.
CJ: It’s highly collaborative, and that’s very intentional. As soon as silos get created within an organization, people shut down and you start to lose productivity. The best companies are always the ones where people understand that we’re better together — which happens to be one of Tile’s core values.
Lissa: We’ve also been careful to create a place where people can be themselves, because we want everyone’s energy going into being creative, not maintaining some façade. I think our leaders do a good job of modeling that; the executive staff is full of people who are incredibly intelligent and also understand everyone’s human and we all make mistakes. And it’s a very flat, open culture — everyone’s voice matters, and it’s our job as leaders to serve our employees. It’s a no-diva zone.
“If you surround yourself with people who come from the same background as you do and think just like you do, you’re not going to be successful.” — CJ
We’re also encouraged to use both sides of our brain here, which CJ is a great model for. He’s super data-driven, but whenever one of us has a personal concern, his heart comes right out. And that respect goes both ways — it’s not a place where everyone waits until the leader leaves the room and decides what they’re really going to do.
How do you think about diversity and inclusion at Tile?
Lissa: We take a holistic approach. We do try to make our pipeline more diverse, through things like reducing bias in job descriptions and reaching out to underrepresented communities. But we also think about diversity, inclusion, and belonging in everything from how we give and receive feedback to when we hold social events — usually during work hours, so you can attend and still pick up your kids or do whatever else you need to do outside work. The TileFlex program allows team members to work where they want, as long as they’re responsive at certain times. We bring different points of view to the table, and encourage the people who have them to speak up.
“This is the time to put the building blocks in place and make sure our culture is woven into the fabric of Tile as we grow.” — Lissa
CJ: Absolutely — the goal is to avoid groupthink. If you surround yourself with a bunch of people who come from the same background as you do and think just like you do, you’re not going to be successful.
That’s especially true when you’re serving a population as large and diverse as Tile’s customers. International growth is such a big part of our strategy, and you can’t build a global business with a homogenous culture.
What challenges are you facing right now?
CJ: One is making sure people outside Tile understand the broader story. Our product is so well-known as a key-finding device, but the problems we’re solving are much larger than that. Prioritization can be difficult, too, precisely because we have so much opportunity. It’s a constant challenge to decide which partners to work with and where to invest our resources — and to make sure we’re not doing too much.
Hiring can also be a challenge, because we’ve set the bar very high. We’ve selected out a lot of people who were highly capable because we didn’t think they’d add to our culture.
Lissa: Yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to scale the culture we’ve created. We’re at a size right now where it’s relatively easy. But this is the time to put the building blocks in place and make sure it’s woven into the fabric of Tile as we grow.
“Tile tends to punch above its weight. There’s a lot of potential still to be realized, and that’s super exciting.” — CJ
I think we’re doing a good job with that so far, especially in terms of development — we’re very focused on helping each employee identify their strengths and then figure out where they can apply them, both to have impact for Tile and to grow their own career. We run a “personal boardroom” program where groups of team members talk through their career development plans and leave with a one-pager to help them discuss those plans with their managers. We also have a very personalized mentorship program developed by one of our engineering directors, where you’re matched based on the specific skills the mentee wants to learn and what the mentor has to offer.
What are you excited about in the next year at Tile?
CJ: For me, it’s the partnerships we’re rolling out — embedding Tile in new types of devices and building new services to support them. We’re also expanding our finding platform by adding fixed access points in hotels, airports, homes, taxis, you name it. Tile tends to punch above its weight in terms of the companies we work with. We’ve already announced partnerships with Google, Comcast, and Sennheiser, and over 20 leading product manufacturers in the audio, travel, lifestyle, and healthcare industries. There’s a lot of potential still to be realized, and that’s super exciting.
Lissa: I want Tile to be a household name and a home screen app! All the growth CJ is talking about also means growth for the people we’ve been investing in, and I love being able to help them on that journey. We have some very big-company opportunities in terms of the projects we’re tackling, but we still get a small-company experience and chance to make an impact. It’s the best of both worlds.
