The story of RIM's phenomenal growth from a small business founded by two Ontario university students TO an international brand with more than six million subscribers spanning 60 countries with revenues in excess of two billion dollars (CND) per year.
1984 - Lazaridis started RIM in 1984, he did so based on his engineering knowledge as well as early life lessons.
1985 - Lazaridis dropped out of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, and with the help of Douglas Fregin. One of the company's first projects was a $600,000 contract with General Motors factories to develop a wireless, networked video display system that displayed information on the assembly line machines.
1988 - Lazaridis and Fregin launched the early BlackBerry with a loan from the Government of Ontario New Ventures program and matching funding provided by Lazaridis' parents. At this time, RIM also working on wireless point-of-sale integration with another company's radios. Lazaridis believed RIM could build better radios than the ones they were working with and so the engineers at RIM began working on a device for internal use.
1990 - the Ontario-based company had begun to develop technology that allowed for better wireless-data communication.
1992 - Jim Balsillie joined RIM as co-CEO, investing $125,000 of his own money into the company by remortgaging his home. While RIM was signing contracts with major companies at the time, Lazaridis was still working to make his larger dream come together. . “Back then I would sit there and say, ‘I understand the value of e-mail. I know e-mail is the future because it makes me incredibly productive. When will everyone else understand that?’ ” he recalls.
1994 - the company received a $100,000 contribution from the federal Industrial Research Assistance Program, facilitated by Lazaridis' University of Waterloo connections. The Business Development Bank of Canada and the Innovations Ontario Program lent the company nearly $300,000. Both Lazaridis and Balsillie negotiated private funding from companies - Lazaridis secured a $300,000 investment from Ericsson (a mobile phone company) and Balsillie attracted almost $2 million in financing from COM DEV, a local technology company based in Waterloo.
1996 - RIM went public and raised $36 million in a special warrant - which is similar to an Initial Public Offering (IPO), but occurs privately - the largest technology special warrant at the time. RIM donated $439,000 to the University of Waterloo for a project that was to "develop the next generation of microchips for wireless communications." That project also received $285,000 from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).
1998 - RIM introduced this new gadget. The first Blackberry—a name suggested by a branding strategist—was touted as a wireless handheld computer. To get people to use it, they offered up the device to potential business customers in sectors like Wall Street on a trial basis.
The company signed wireless provider agreements with BellSouth Wireless, among others, to distribute their product. Ironically, e-mail proper did not start to penetrate corporate America until that same year. Wireless e-mail was still virtually unheard of, but investors could see it was looming on the horizon. As a result, the company was able to raise roughly $250 million to expand Blackberry technology. More details about successful of RIM is on Business Gained Success entry.
