Today we’d like to introduce you to Mark Jones.
Mark, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
It’s a long and winding one but here goes. Grew up a Navy brat. Moved about every two to three years. Born in Sasebo Japan while my Dad was on a ship stationed there. Then we lived in Charleston SC, Honolulu Hawaii, Chester VA, Glendora CA, Del Mar CA, Fairfax VA.
I received an NROTC scholarship to UC Berkeley and graduated with a BS in Civil Engineering there. I was planning on being a SeaBee, the guys who do construction for the Navy. Instead, the Navy wanted me to be a nuclear officer. I sort of had no choice, so I wound up a Naval Nuclear Officer. At the time I was not real big on cruising down under in a submarine, so I managed to get into the Navy’s Nuclear Program Headquarters called Naval Reactors or NAVSEA 08. A guy named Admiral Rickover ran it. Started the nuclear navy. He’s pretty famous.
I spent my time there mainly helping manage the nuclear power plants in guided missile cruisers and aircraft carriers. The only time I spent on a ship was during sea trials to test reactor plants and the operators after a ship was overhauled. I learned a lot about big organizations there. Looking back, I probably would have preferred being a regular naval officer that rode the ships around and had some more adventures but at the time that was not my thing. Times and people change. Regardless, it was a great experience. I decided to leave the Navy after my 6-year commitment was up. I received my honorable discharge as a Lieutenant.
After that, I began working for a small defense contractor in Rockville MD named Radix Systems whose primary work was to quiet submarines. I worked a lot of classified acoustic projects that required a technology called digital signal processing. So I tried to get smarter at that and while at Radix got my Masters in Electrical Engineering with an emphasis in digital signal processing from Johns Hopkins University. Digital signal processing is used in cellular and satellite communications among other things.
After 5 years at Radix, I got a job offer from a satellite communications startup company called Torrey Sciences in San Diego. I have family in San Diego and wanted to get back out here, and I also wanted to work for a startup, so I took the job with Torrey Sciences. Torrey was a hot startup. At the time, this was 1996, many thought its potential was as good as Qualcomm’s.
At Torrey, I mainly worked on satellite algorithms that required digital signal processing. Torrey was completing the system design of a new satellite network called ORBCOMM. I helped design and implement communication algorithms that worked in modems that communicated with the network and in the base stations that received the communications from the satellites. I did that for about 3 years. Unfortunately, ORBCOMM did not take off as a business. It went bankrupt, and Torrey went out of business. Turned out it was not quite as hot as Qualcomm.
A small San Diego startup called Quake Global purchased Torrey’s ORBCOMM assets and I continued to work on ORBCOMM systems at Quake. ORBCOMM got purchased out of bankruptcy and went public, so it continued on. At Quake I just grinded so I moved up the ladder and eventually became VP of Engineering and Chief Technical Officer there. We were building ORBCOMM modems and other Machine-to-Machine products. After 8 years at Quake, I wanted some new experiences so I left to get my MBA at San Diego State and do some consulting work.
The consulting work led to an opportunity with a San Diego startup called Field Intelligence. Field Intelligence was building a soil moisture monitoring unit that communicated via satellite networks and helped farmers determine when and how much to irrigate. I became an owner at Field Intelligence, and we moved into building other satellite and cellular communication products for the agricultural industry. We were connecting to irrigation pumps, weather stations, things like that. I was Chief Technical Officer at Field Intelligence.
After 3 years at Field Intelligence, I sold my ownership to begin a startup wireless communication company with one of my old bosses from Quake Global. The new company, called Silver Bridge Technologies, Inc. is where I am today.
Personally, I like to do lots of things. I am a tennis player, golfer, bicyclist(rode bike across the country once), and an adventurer of sorts(multiple weeks travels to Australia, China, Brazil, Europe). I am unmarried and have a 15-year-old son. I am a huge San Diego State basketball fan, and an Aztec fan in general.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Completely rocky. Our first systems were solely based on the GPS data provided by our trackers installed on the trucks. It turned out that trucks often have private events where they don’t want to let customers know their position. It wasn’t hard to build some features to let the truck manager turn on or off the GPS data, but that then required them to interact with the system which defeats a large part of the purpose. Truck owners are busy. All of this GPS stuff has to occur automatically.
So for some trucks, we found that it was just better to work with their schedule instead of the real-time GPS position. That was just the start. We were only going to provide GPS information and fleet management, similar to what we do for fleets. We never anticipated building CRM and CMS systems for food trucks. But that is where the real value is for them. So it’s been a rocky road, but it’s been fun developing it.
The major obstacle has been to know what I want to be when I grow-up. When I was a little kid I wanted to be a professional athlete(yeh, right), when I was in high school I had no clue, when I was in college I wanted to be a Seabee (Navy did not let me. Poor timing), when I got out of the Navy I wanted to be an entrepreneur, when I was at Torrey Science I wanted to be a VP of Engineering, when I was a VP of Engineering I wanted to get into business, when I got into business I wanted to start my own company, and now that I have my own company I want to do the best job I can possibly do. Hopefully, that will make the company successful. Once that happens, I have no idea.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Food Truck Connector is a brand of Silver Bridge Technologies, Inc. Silver Bridge is a technology company whose main expertise is wireless tracking of vehicles and other assets providing the data connection from the vehicle/asset to the user through satellite or cellular networks for eventual display on the users’ computer, mobile phone, or anything that displays Internet data. One of our early customers was a food truck. It seemed to us that instead of keeping the vehicle tracking information private, which is the normal case with fleet management and GPS tracking, we should expose the tracking information to the public, i.e., the food truck customers.
Food trucks are restaurants on wheels. You wouldn’t open a restaurant without letting people know where it is, would you? So we started making the GPS tracking portion of our service to this food truck public. That’s what started Food Truck Connector.
But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Food trucks need websites, so we started a web hosting system specific to food trucks, food trucks need to tweet, so we created a Twitter platform that would tweet their position and information automatically, food trucks have to schedule their truck and expose their public events, so we created a calendar platform that we integrated with Google maps, and so on, and so on. All of this resulted in the beginning of a Content Management System (think WordPress) and Customer Relationship Management System (think SalesForce) specific to the requirements of food trucks. As a startup, we are actively working on these technologies with feedback from food trucks and food truck customers. We have launched and are testing our business model in Southern California.
What were you like growing up?
Navy brat. Good at sports when I was a little kid, not as good when I got into high school. Sports-centric family. Always have enjoyed sports, watching and participating.
Contact Info:
- Website: foodtruckconnector.com sandiegofoodtrucks.com
- Phone: 619-756-1795
- Email: mark@silverbridgeus.com
- Instagram: Silver Bridge Techologies
- Facebook: Silver Bridge Techologies
- Twitter: sdfoodtruckconn
- Yelp: Silver Bridge Techologies
- Other: Silver Bridge Techologies
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