Where Every Person on the Planet is a Consumer: Craig Walker Follows His Passion For Communications

Where Every Person on the Planet is a Consumer: Craig Walker Follows His Passion For Communications

In 2001, Craig made the foray from legislation into the startup world. He joined a company called Dialpad that by all accounts was a sinking ship. There’s little pressure to succeed aboard a sinking ship. There’s also a sizable challenge to keep it afloat. The combination attracted Craig. After Dialpad raised 68 million in 6 months and spent over 80 million in 18 months, Craig set out to bring them back from the brink, while getting his feet wet leading a company.

“It was like operating on a corpse. had the company died, no one would have blamed me,” Craig says with a knowing laugh. He’s aware of his gallows humor, and nonetheless continues onto making a poignant observation. “Near death experiences teach you to be super focused. When some Dialpad marketing people asked me, ‘Should we spend $40,000 on this marketing campaign?’ I said ‘NO!’” This was a hallmark of the strategy Craig used to turn Dialpad around – what he calls “depression-era” tactics. “We want to make the product amazing, not worry about blowing millions of dollars to design an office,” he says.

As you can probably guess from his law degree and MBA, Craig is a pretty driven guy. When he wants to make a product amazing, odds are he’s going to do it. When he finds his product niche, he’s going to stick with it. At Dialpad, he made a groove in communications technology and stuck with it.

[Catch Craig Walker’s keynote at Signal, May 19th-20th in San Francisco]

The MBA in Craig cites communications technology as the perfect market. The entrepreneur in Craig relishes the challenge to change an industry whose old guards have done a fantastic job at neglecting user experience, and new technology. When Craig founded UberConference he was surprised that so many customers were used to such a terrible conference call experience, and that their previous experience was standard fare. “It shocked me that the conference call was the same in 2012 as it was in 1982.”

UberConference was the seed that developed into Google Voice, probably the most famous product that Craig’s worked on. It was a herculean effort, but one that was made easier by Craig’s passion for communications. “I like communications because every person on the planet is a consumer,” he says. “It’s easy to work on something that you’re passionate about, even if it’s something that you have a problem with.”

Craig still has a problem with communications technology, because he knows it’s not perfect yet. Communications is a gift that keeps on giving, there’s an opportunity to improve it. It’s a perfect fit for me because it’s evolving. It’s evolving with the web. Legacy guys don’t get it. It’s a perfect opportunity for people who also understand the telecom side of things and understand the power of the internet.  That combination is powerful.”

Craig knows his combinations. He’s based his career on them: legal savvy and entrepreneurial spirit, sinking ships full of ripe opportunities, telecom’s potential and the internet’s power. But, there’s an new combination he’s looking forward to. There’s a slate of software-centric entrepreneurs who are using technology like WebRTC to change the way we communicate. Craig’s hopeful that they’ll focus not on bringing telecom out of the past, but into the future.