Tom Weeks Joins Point One During Period of Expansive Growth

Point One Navigation is thrilled to introduce our new chief operating officer, Tom Weeks. 

Tom joins the company at a critical time, bringing his experience with six previous startups to bear as we look toward a season of aggressive growth and expansion ahead. As he takes the operations helm this summer, we wanted to share more about his background, what drew him to Point One, and what he sees for the company over the next 24 months.

Finding the Startup Inflection Point

Like many startup executives, Tom spent part of his career working for a large, public company. However, since being drawn into the startup world 15 years and four startups ago, he hasn’t looked back.

“There are many benefits to being a large company, of course, but getting anything done is super slow,” he says. “And as you move up in the organization, you spend far more time managing internally than you do with what really moves the business: your customers and your team. It's interesting to do once, but being able to get out and be in an environment where you have none of that and you're just focused on building and growing a company and business — that's the allure.”

In particular, he’s been drawn to companies that sit right around the same growth stage as Point One — they’ve received Seed or Series A funding, proven their product has a place in the market, and are now looking to scale. They’ve all brought the challenge of finding “the various ways you can grow and scale a startup business while still staying a startup, still staying agile and incredibly flexible.”

Something about the testing ground of that transition has continually drawn him to new projects, and he has found ongoing success with each new venture, whether those companies have gone public, been bought, or received high valuations.

A Flair for Disruption

Tom’s successful startup ventures have spanned numerous industries and markets, but one specific feature has tied them all together: disruption. While the technologies have differed across projects, each has been positioned to unsettle traditional industries by innovating and reengineering new and better ways to get the job done.

That same approach characterizes Point One, and it caught his attention enough to join the team.

“What I really look for is something and someone who has created a platform that's really disrupting an old way of doing business,” he says. “That's certainly what they've done at Point One, and what's really up my alley is that disruption comes in the form of really being modern, cloud-based, API-centric — all those things that startup software companies are.”

For innovation to be successful, it can’t merely disrupt for the sake of disruption. The product has to prove it has a place in the market — without the need to convince stakeholders of its value. 

And thus far, that’s exactly what he has seen with Point One.

“The amount of market reception with very little effort in marketing is just remarkable,” he explains. “So, you get a company that's disrupting a traditional industry with a really modern API and cloud-centric approach and a team that's just incredibly talented, focused, and fun to be around. That has always led to success in the past for me.”

The 2-Year Plan: Scaling for a Global Market

So, how does he see that success playing out at Point One? As Tom joins the team, he stresses that the company is at that “inflection point” he’s so familiar with. That means the challenge for the next two years is to translate its proven “product-market fit” to a full-fledged “go-to-market fit.”

“You’ve got to have consistency in messaging,” he says. “You have to have consistency of process. You have to have those things that help you understand and manage a business — I call that ‘go-to-market fit.’ So, how do you take this incredible product and this value proposition that a founder can articulate in so many different ways and build a go-to-market team that distills that down to the essence of what normal human beings like me can actually communicate?”

With go-to-market fit, Tom says, Point One will be in a position to “super scale.” In an era where startup growth in general has slowed significantly, he thinks Point One can triple its growth year over year. 

Exactly what that looks like, only time will tell. Tom may have been down similar roads before, but he knows this one will have its own twists and turns. 

“It's a failed proposition when people come into startups and say, ‘This is the way we did something before, so this is the way we're going to do it here,’” he says.

His experiences will certainly play a role in his decisions and leadership at Point One — but they won’t form a rigid road map for his newest startup adventure. However it unfolds, we’re excited to have Tom leading the way for operations as we look toward this season of growth.