A Slice on Bob Miles, Founder and CEO of Salad
Bob Miles’ founder journey has been anything but a straight trajectory. Originally from Australia, Miles studied Engineering for 6 years and spent 9 months in the enterprise workforce before he burnt out and started working in the startup space. After working as a product manager for IOS and Android apps for 10 years, Miles found his way to the U.S., specifically Silicon Valley and finally to the Silicon Slopes of Utah. “[Utah] wasn’t really on my radar, certainly not for me back then. To be honest, hindsight is 2020 and I’m happy I’m not in the Bay Area, especially now.”
Utah has grown into a booming tech sector that combines the hustle of Silicon Valley and the laid-back lifestyle of the Rocky Mountains. With great access to capital, workforce, and a flourishing startup community, Miles has found a home for not only himself but for his company as well.
Salad is not Miles’ first startup. Out of college, he started a shower screen installation business which acted as his first insight into running a business. Later, from 2010- 2013, he and a few friends co-founded a digital media company that developed into the National Geographic show “The Green Way Up” where they traveled around in a biodiesel vehicle using waste from restaurants, abattoirs and other places that produce oil or fat as the fuel. This was all before electric vehicles were a popular consumer choice. Needless to say, Miles has been ahead of the game.
When asked about the biggest obstacle to being an entrepreneur, Miles noted that having a bad idea with good execution will most likely result in little to no traction. “That’s the big one, you’ve got to be honest with yourself and recognize ‘is this worth pursuing?’ But if you get over that hurdle, subsequent to that, the really big thing for me is having the tenacity and perseverance to keep going.” Luck is also an important part of an entrepreneur’s journey.
So… what is Salad? As our lives are becoming more and more digital, there is an explosive demand for compute resources and Salad is working to be the easiest and most trusted way to do so. They do this by harnessing your idle computer’s power and sharing it with others in exchange for gift cards, subscriptions and games. Miles understands that compute cycles, bandwidth and storage can become the commodity of this century. By partnering with gamers, Salad is turning downtime into downloads and is working to help preserve the integrity of the internet by sharing their compute with the community.
At this point, you’re probably thinking, ‘Why the name Salad?’ This is a question Miles receives frequently. “If you think about it, it’s a bit of fun,” he laughed, “Our value proposition is installing this application and we’ll pay you for your idle compute time. It sounds like a scam.” One of the biggest challenges Salad faced early on was ‘How do we frame this in the most transparent and approachable way possible?’ Another obstacle startups face is finding a domain name and trademarking their brand’s name. “There’s not much left out there. So Salad is one we came across and it really suits our cause. We’re aiming to be the easiest, most trusted way to share your compute and by doing so we’re championing human collaboration. We’re all ingredients in supporting this.”
Salad is mixing up the compute-sharing world with innovative technology and philosophies. By acting as a human collaborative project, Miles and his team are working to make the idea of a shared internet possible. And it’s working. With over 20k Discord members and 297,000 registered users, shared compute went from an idea to a trusted option for PC users.
Founder Bio
Bob Miles, originally from Australia, has a background in engineering, aviation and project and product management. He’s founded multiple companies, including The Green Way Up, caMetric and now his current venture, Salad, based in Utah. Connect with Miles on LinkedIn.
