LEADERSHIP Conversations with the Captains of Industry
It ’s a Small World
Tony Small has big ambitions for the Internet of Things (IoT). Since July 2021, Small has served as chief business of cer of Wiliot, an Israel-based startup, with U.S. headquarters in San Diego, that offers a cloud-based IoT platform with many supply chain applications. The system features tiny, low-cost tags called pixels, equipped with sensors and Bluetooth communications. Wiliot’s platform can uncover supply chain challenges that companies don’t even realize they face, Small notes. In a recent conversation, Small discussed his leadership role at Wiliot and explained what’s on his agenda these days. IL: Before Wiliot, you worked at Microsoft, Amazon, and Zillow, among other companies. Is there a theme to the companies you’ve picked in your career? I like fast-paced, innovation-oriented companies and environments. Although in the past 15 to 20 years I’ve focused on sales, marketing, and business development, I come from a technology and product background. I minored in computer science, and I’m a programmer. This allows me to better communicate, relate, and empathize with other parts of a company, beyond marketing. IL: What’s one experience from earlier in your career that helped to shape you as a leader? Partway through my time at Zillow, when they acquired Trulia, I was in charge of merging the two go-to-market teams for their B2B product. We had to combine 1,000 people across two organizations and four cities, along with the product and infrastructure. That kind of integration usually takes several years, but the CEO gave us six months. I learned that you can usually move faster than you think possible. You can analyze, predict, and think of as many things as you want, but until you do something, you don’t know the outcome. We had debates about whether A, B, or C would be the top issue, and how to plan for that. We nally made an informed judgment and decided to address A. But the biggest issue turned out to be something entirely different. That process taught me about bias toward action, a value I consider really important. IL: What keeps your customers awake at night? They don’t know what they don’t know. For example, we put our tags on crates in which one of our customers was
Tony Small, Chief Business Of cer, Wiliot
With a goal to get Wiliot ’s products to customers around the world and make a big impact on them, Tony Small learned that you can usually move faster than you think possible.
by Merrill Douglas
12 Inbound Logistics • February 2022
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