Mutual Mobile CEO John Arrow draws strength from Steve Jobs, Ramen and high school algebra

John Arrow, the amiable and unassuming 24 year-old CEO of Austin start-up Mutual Mobile—the largest mobile app solutions company in the nation—doesn’t want to be a tech rock star. And although he has the brains, the success and the means, he is disdainful of the idea of driving a Porsche Boxcar, throwing elaborate parties or having pimped out office spaces.

Though he was a kid during the dot-com heyday and subsequent bust of the 90s, he paid attention to the hard lessons learned from flashy dot-com disasters. Arrow lists aviator Howard Hughes, computer genius Bill Gates and engineer, philanthropist, Paypal and SpaceX entrepreneur Elon Musk as heroes he admires.

Just days after the Apple shake up, there is another hero who stands out in particular. Had it not been for the visionary Ex-Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Arrow might not have created Mutual Mobile for it was during Arrow’s senior year at the University of Texas that the iPhone was released and Jobs presented the concept of the App Store. Arrow, always forward-thinking, saw the opportunity of a lifetime.

Recognizing that there was not a major player established in the field, he and his fellow UT Flight Club friends and future business partners, Tarun Nimmagadda, Mickey Ristroph and Jason Story, had the opportunity to establish themselves as the world’s experts on mobile.

He dropped out of school his senior year and never looked back. Jobs set into motion Arrow’s revolution. He was ready to, as Jobs would say, “put a dent in the universe.”

He dropped out of school his senior year and never looked back. Jobs set into motion Arrow’s revolution. He was ready to, as Jobs would say, “put a dent in the universe.”

Unlike most start-ups, Mutual Mobile did not finance its inception through large investors. Instead, the company pooled resources and funded itself through consulting services. “We started on the notion of ‘Ramen profitability,’” stated Mutual Mobile Chief Operating Officer Tarun Nimmagadda in a recent Austin Post interview. “The idea is when you start a business people say ‘reach for the stars,’ like Facebook, like Google. But this notion was saying that you should start something sustainable enough so the founders can buy Ramen noodles. That’s what we set out to do – have this small, intermediate goal… Our first goal was to reach $1 profit, then second goal was $10 profit, we’ve basically been doubling that goal every sixth months and now we’re in the tens of millions of dollars.”

Technology will eventually bring the coalescence of computer and human.

This “Ramen Profitability” model has allowed Mutual Mobile to grow from four employees in 2009 to 200 by the end of 2011. They have also rapidly expanded to offices in Austin, San Francisco and India and tout clients such as Google, Dell, Gowalla, StumbleUpon, Audi and Dell  ….Continued at CultureMapAustin