Chet Pipkin
14 statements across 2 episodes · 1 bullish · 2 bearish · 1 people on the record · first statement May 13, 2019 by Chet Pipkin · said 3 times in 1 episodes since 2019 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Chet Pipkin's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Guy Raz (3)
tap a year for its mentions
2019 3 mentions in 1 episode
Everything said about Chet Pipkin, oldest first
May 13, 2019 neutral
Pipkin named Belkin to reuse business cards from an abandoned venture
“A friend of mine, he and I were going to start a different business, not Belkin, but something else, and because he and I were going to do that, I had bought letterhead and business cards that had said Belkin. His last name began with B-E-L, and so then when w…”
May 13, 2019
Early PCs and printers had vast arrays of incompatible connectors
“And because these computers were being made by all these different manufacturers, they had different connectors on them, and the printers had different connectors on them. And it's not like The way that it works today, that there's a relatively small number of…”
May 13, 2019
Pipkin initially bought Belkin components at retail, relying on unpaid labor
“In those early days, the cost that I was paying for the components wasn't competitive. Some of the times I was buying it at a place like a Radio Shack or an electronic store or something, but my labor was, you know, free, and there was no doubt in my mind that…”
May 13, 2019
May 13, 2019
Pipkin's father mortgaged the family home to survive a customer's bankruptcy
“We had a customer file for chapter 11, and we didn't have the money to uncover the money that we weren't gonna get from them, and I went to my dad to borrow money, and my mom and dad didn't have a lot of money. And he took a loan out on the house, the very hou…”
May 13, 2019
May 13, 2019 positive
Belkin moved to Compton in 1991 for larger facilities and community impact
“One was we were moving to bigger and bigger buildings, and there simply weren't that many of them available. Two, real estate was less expensive. I had spent and continued to spend a lot of time doing community service work, and that was mostly with youth, and…”
May 13, 2019
Belkin raised outside funding before it needed capital to learn the process
“We could start to see a time in the future to get to a bigger scale that we would absolutely need outside capital. So we made a conscious choice on that day because we didn't need it, but we figured that the day would come that we would need it, and that, that…”
May 13, 2019 negative
Pipkin avoided manufacturing PCs due to capital constraints and intense competition
“It definitely crossed my mind, but it was pretty quickly dismissed. The amount of capital that it would have taken to do that in any meaningful way would have been more than I could have imagined being able to kind of muster and do. And secondly, there seemed …”
Nov 13, 2025 neutral
Nov 13, 2025
Pipkin: Belkin Solved Cash Flow by Having Manufacturers Hold Inventory
“We had the same problem at Belkin. Not enough cash. No working capital to invest in goods. So the way we solved that issue was we formed a very tight alliance with the person that was manufacturing our stuff. And we built a lot of trust with them. And so it wa…”
Nov 13, 2025 negative
Pipkin: Belkin's Biggest Errors Came From Listening to Outside Pros
“The systems and the approaches that we invented were really appropriate and good for our business, and some of the biggest errors we made Was listening to so-called pros tell us at a future point in time that the right way to run a business is, you know, fill …”
Nov 13, 2025
Pipkin: B2B Sales Win Through Internal Evangelists, Not Direct Cold Pitches
“The problem with you doing it, even with the data and everything, there's too many people trying to sell too much stuff and everybody's got all these claims. They don't know who is credible and who is not. For me, you have to get the inside voice. Whatever it …”
Nov 13, 2025
Pipkin: Green products face steep resistance if they cost more or add friction
“Most of the research I've seen seems to say that people clamor to be able to use an environmentally friendly replacement if it doesn't cost them any more. And it doesn't inconvenience them in any way. As soon as it does cost more, or the inconvenience is there…”