267: 7 Startup Lessons from BlackBerry’s Rise and Fall

Most non-technical founders dream of building a game-changing tech product—without learning to code.

But bridging the gap between vision and execution? That takes more than just a good idea.

In this episode, Sophia Matveeva breaks down 7 essential lessons from the rise and fall of BlackBerry, a tech company that revolutionized communication, then lost it all.

You’ll learn why great engineers aren’t enough, how clueless sales pitches kill trust, and why falling in love with your invention might be your biggest risk.

Whether you’re planning your first app or scaling your second startup, this episode is packed with real talk and timeless wisdom, straight from a founder who’s been there.

In this episode, you will hear:

• BlackBerry's rise and fall as a case study for tech and business collaboration
• Importance of mutual respect and tech fluency between engineers and non-technical founders
• Lessons from the BlackBerry movie for non-technical founders to avoid past mistakes
• Strategies for non-technical leaders to effectively bridge the tech gap
• Importance of top-tier engineering talent and the value of significant investment in tech expertise
• Need for effective communication between sales and technical teams to prevent crises

Resources from this Episode

Free class: Introduction to Tech for Non-Technical Founders

https://www.techfornontechies.co/freeclass

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TRANSCRIPT

Sophia Matveeva

Hello smart people, how are you today? If we haven't met yet, I'm Sofia Matveeva. I am a non-technical founder who has built tech businesses from scratch and helped government and Fortune 500s upscale for the digital economy. And this show is where non-technical founders learn how to build tech ventures without drowning in tech jargon. And so if that's your goal, then hit subscribe. And if you would like to go deeper, then I'm running a free class this September, so in just a few weeks time, and it's called the Introduction to Tech for Non-Technical Founders, and you can register for that class at techfornontechiesco forward slash free class. That's techfornontechiesco forward slash free class. That's techfornontechiesco forward slash free class, and the link to that is in the show notes. 

We will cover what you need to know if you have an idea for an app or a tech venture, but you're not a codeword, so this episode is actually based on what I did last weekend, and last weekend I watched the BlackBerry movie on Netflix and honestly, it's really, really good, and we're going to cover the lessons learned from BlackBerry's dramatic rise and its swift fall, and I'm not going to give anything away really from the movie when I tell you that BlackBerry they really invented the category of the smartphone. Yes, there were other people working on it, but they were really the ones that had the technological breakthrough and the commercial breakthrough. So it was the first mass market product that combined phone and email and very quickly its dominance was completely wiped out by the iPhone. So to get the best benefits from the BlackBerry case study, I suggest that you listen to this episode and then watch the movie yourself and then see what else you've learned. Maybe there are other lessons apart from these seven, and also, I find that the movie is just a good movie in itself, so you don't have to watch it with other tech and business nerds. You can watch it with your family, who might have no interest in tech at all. Okay, so let's get on with our seven lessons. 

Lesson number one Nerds need business people, but you don't have to be mean to them. So in the movie you will see that Blackberry's engineers are super brilliant. They're really nerdy. They're kind of these cute nerdy people, but they're really terrible at commercializing innovation, and actually it's something that reminds me of the General Magic case study, which I talked about a while ago a few, probably a few years ago on this podcast, anyway. So it is actually quite normal to have brilliant engineers who are really great inventors, but they just don't have that commercialization muscle. And so if they didn't have in Blackberry's case, if they didn't have a great commercial person, they would have stayed in obscurity. 

But you will see that in the movie the CEO is portrayed as being pretty awful. So he's aggressive, he's rude, he's disrespectful. Apparently it wasn't like that in real life, but you know it's a movie, so it makes a good viewing, right, anyway. So in the movie it shows that his rudeness did drive early results, but it definitely also burnt bridges and also it's just not necessary. I think you can be aggressive in business without being aggressive to the people who are helping you create what you're creating. So the lesson is engineers and business leaders. We need each other, but the partnership needs to be built on mutual respect and not on hostility. And, by the way, I have seen this hostile dynamic also play out the other way around. So I've seen companies where engineers intimidate the business people and that doesn't work either. You really really need mutual respect, not complete dominance of one over the other. So lesson two you do need some tech fluency to be able to sell well. So this is obviously for non-technical founders, for business leaders, you have to learn something about technology. 

So in the movie it shows that the BlackBerry CEO struggled to pitch the BlackBerry product because basically, he didn't really understand how it was made and he didn't understand the tech context. Basically, there were lots of teams working on solving this problem of how do we get email into the phone and it wasn't working. And he didn't know that and he didn't know why it wasn't working. And so when he went to Pitt, basically he just looked kind of clueless and he didn't look credible. So he needed to know. Some took terms and he needed to know the backstory. He didn't actually need to go and, like you know, take the thing apart and build it himself right. So as a non-technical innovator, as a non-technical founder, you don't need to code especially now with AI and no-code tools but you need to speak tech so you can represent your product and your team accurately, win trust and basically avoid looking clueless, because if you look clueless, people are not going to trust you and they're not going to buy your product, they're not going to invest in your company. Okay, lesson three talent is not distributed equally. 

So one of this film's themes echoes something that steve jobs and basically lots of people who have really been at the top of tech that they often say. The best engineers are not just a little better than you know the mid engineers, they are thousands of times better than average. So BlackBerry's breakthroughs happened because the company made an enormous effort to recruit really, really exceptional engineers and they also paid them a lot. And actually that's quite controversial in the movie. I'll let you watch that one. But the thing is, if you pay an engineer $10 million, that sounds okay. Even now that sounds $10 million is a lot right per year. But if you pay that engineer $10 million and their tech breakthrough like the thing that they invent allows you to capture a billion-dollar market, you have got yourself a bargain. You made a great investment. So now you might have seen in the news that Meta and you know the other Silicon Valley companies are paying fortunes to AI engineers, and this is basically why Now don't freak out, because most companies do not need the absolute best engineers in the world. If you are not building some sort of bleeding edge breakthrough technology, you don't need to be competing with the likes of Meta. You just need the right level of talent for the stage that you're at. Okay, lesson four Product does not sell itself. 

You need PR, you need to create an appropriate image that gets people to want your thing. So I remember when I graduated from university, I was in London and I worked in the city, and the city is basically like the Wall Street of the UK and so I was working in a financial services firm and I was given a BlackBerry and most of my friends were not given BlackBerrys at their work. My investment banking friends were, and then there was me and basically nobody else, and so literally I was the envy of my friends because I looked very important and you know I'd get it out and I was like, yes, I need to check my email. It was very much a status symbol. It basically made you look like you were part of the elite, part of the like business in Egypt. It made you look important and in the movie it actually shows how they created that image. So Blackberry's success was not only the super innovative product, which actually did make work a lot easier, it was also brand and image creation. So BlackBerry proves that a great product, a super innovative product that nobody else has succeeded in creating, still needs PR and still needs clever marketing to take off. And this is where the business leader, the CEO, was really sure to make a difference in the movie and, honestly, the nerd could not have done it without him. So this is more evidence that the two sides need each other to build something successful. 

Okay, lesson five, we've got three lessons left. Okay, lesson five, we've got three lessons left. Communication between teams could be a matter of life and death for the company. So there's an interesting bit in the movie when the sales team goes out and sells lots and lots and lots of phones and they think, yeah, yeah, we're doing really well, we're going to get our sales bonus and the CA go us. However, engineering does not know what the sales team's targets are and they don't know that the sales team is actually hitting those targets. They don't know what the sales team is promising. So all these phones get sold. 

What happens? The BlackBerry system crashes and it's a massive disaster. You will see it in the media. It's basically a huge, huge crisis, and the point is, if you have commercial teams and technical teams not speaking to each other, some sort of disaster is inevitable. You know, maybe you're not going to be as big as BlackBerry, maybe you're not creating something that literally changes how the world communicates. But if you don't have salespeople speaking to the tech people, you will have some sort of very big problem, and the good news is that this potentially big problem is super easily solvable in a simple and cheap way. Literally, what you need is a half an hour meeting with the two sides every week, when the tech side tells the sales side what they're talking about and the other way around, so you literally tell each other what you're working on and then you get on with it. So this kind of meeting could help save you from a crisis and you might learn something. You might even make some friends. So do it, okay. 

Lesson six Company culture changes as you grow, and I thought that this was a really kind of heartbreaking lesson the way it was shown in the movie. It's actually really sad because you know at the beginning it's's this fun, chaotic startup with these very dedicated nerds and it's it's kind of it's very cute, and then as they become this you know, publicly listed company, they have big investors, they have big customers. It becomes a big corporate and you still have the early stage people there and they basically don't sit in with what the company is, and there's lots and lots of tension about that. So again, I told you it's a good movie, you should watch it. The thing is, this is normal. Not everybody can make the transition from startup life to corporate life. It doesn't make them bad, it doesn't make you bad, it's just simply what happens. And this is also one of the reasons why acquisitions of startups by corporates often fail, because the two cultures don't mix. So if you are working in mergers and acquisitions, if you are in a corporate, for example, and you're interested in acquiring startups, just be aware of this, and there are things that you can do to mitigate it, but you have to basically work on it before the problem arises. Okay, high note. 

Lesson lesson seven I think this is the hardest one to follow. Actually, don't follow, don't fall in love with your invention. So inventors love their ideas. Inventors love their products. Founders love their companies. I mean, I love Texel and Techies. I have a very rational commitment to this company, right, and this is normal. This is completely normal. This is why we work extra hard. This is why, as founders, as innovators, we basically go the extra mile to create something, and it's because of this rational attachment. So this attachment is normal, but it can cloud our judgment. 

So when the iPhone appeared in the movie, you'll see that Nagbari's leadership, the product people and the CEO they couldn't really admit that it was a better product, especially the product people, the people who invented the BlackBerry they were like no, no, no, we've created something amazing. This is just a phase. What is this? The iPhone doesn't even have a keyboard. This thing is going to pass. And because they were blinded by their own attachment to their own invention, they couldn't be objective. 

So the next seven here is love your work, but don't lose objectivity. This is much easier to say than to do. So what I would suggest you have is you have objective advisors. So have an advisory board, or have a board, or just you know, have people in your life who can tell you the truth. But also, even if they can tell you the truth, make sure that you're actually willing to hear them. So that's it for our seven lessons. 

So, if you're a non-technical founder, blackberry is a really, really good movie to watch, both for entertainment and for education. And remember, I am running a free class in September on the introduction to tech for non-technical founders, so you will learn the essentials that you need to collaborate with engineers, with designers, to speak tech with confidence and to avoid the mistakes that BlackBerry CEO made. The register at techtechiesco forward slash free class, and the link to that is also in the show notes. And if you found this episode useful, then make sure to hit the subscribe button so you never miss another lesson for non-technical founders. And on this note, thank you very much for lending me your ears today. Have a wonderful day and I shall be back with you next week. Ciao.