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Pomona College Magazine is published three times a year by Pomona College
550 N. College Ave, Claremont, CA 91711
Online Editor: Mark Kendall
For editorial matters:
Editor: Mark Wood
Phone: (909) 621-8158
Fax: (909) 621-8203
PCM Editorial Guidelines
Contact Alumni Records for changes of address, class notes, or notice
of births or deaths.
Phone: (909) 621-8635
Fax: (909) 621-8535
Email: alumni@pomona.edu
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Inventor Robb Hendrickson '99 follows his own
tune
Song of the Jellifish
By Gregg Mitchell ’89
Roots-rocker Ben Harper has one. So do guitar gods like Joe Satriani and
Adrian Belew. Is it the latest bling-bling ice? Personal spiritual
instructor? No, it’s the Jellifish, a little piece of state-of-the-art
technology meets old-fashioned ingenuity that’s turning the music
industry on its ear.
Designed with custom-wound 32-gauge guitar strings cut at an angle like
a kitchen broom, then laser-cut and fused to a piece of gleaming Lexan,
the Jellifish is a deceptively low-tech tool that, when brushed across a
guitar’s coated strings, echoes sounds similar to other string
instruments, as varied as the cello or 12-string guitar.
Although at first glance it looks a bit like a typical guitar pick,
that’s where the similarities end. The Jellifish’s unique design allows
musicians to create new sonic textures using three basic techniques—the
“chorus” (producing an effect similar to a 12-string guitar or chorus
pedal), the “pluck” (creating a tone similar to a harpsichord or
dulcimer) and the “bow” (imitating the sound of bowed
instruments like the cello or violin).
“To be honest, I don’t even refer to the Jellifish as a guitar pick—I
think of it as a hand-held mechanical effect,” says inventor Robb
Hendrickson ’99. Or, as one customer's testimonial posted on his Web site
(www.jellifish.com) raves, “It’s
a ten-dollar stomp box!” – all with no batteries or cables required.
Struck by how his early prototype resembled a jellyfish, Hendrickson
christened his patented pick, as well as its parent guitar-accessories
company, with a re-tooled version of its namesake: the Jellifish.
It was a fitting name choice for someone who has spent plenty of time
working underwater, just one of many unusual twists in his career.
A Chicago native who later moved to Los Angeles, he graduated from
Pomona with a concentration in mathematical economics at the
nontraditional age of 32. He has tried his hand at everything from
offshore oil diving to investment banking to a stint as a music studio
engineer. “I’ve always done what has interested me,” he says.
Fascinated by oil field diving in his younger years, he was soon earning
a living doing “ultra-thermic burning” (essentially, “cutting things
apart underwater”), later graduating to underwater welding and a slew of
underwater construction jobs both in Chicago and on the West Coast.
Then Hendrickson made the unlikely leap from offshore to office space.
He attempted to take over the commercial diving firm he’d been running
as operating officer and, during the somewhat labyrinthian process of
rounding up financing, he stumbled onto “a whole new world about buying
and selling companies I knew nothing about.” With his interest piqued by
the potential applications of mathematics to finance, Hendrickson landed
a plum internship at investment firm John Nuveen, working at their
private equity group in Irvine before transferring back to corporate
headquarters in Chicago, making the transition to mergers and
acquisitions. After the company was sold, Hendrickson received an
alluring offer from New York-based firm Gerard/Klauer, and soon he was launching Klauer’s Chicago office. Then the dotcom bubble burst in 2000 and
Hendrickson came to a professional crossroads. “There just weren’t a lot
of deals getting done, so I decided, why not start my own company?,” he
says.
An avid guitarist since the age of 7, Hendrickson also
had experimented with digital audio recording back in the late ’80s,
performed in a slew of indie rock bands (with names like the Hooligans
and Swollen Heads) and eventually established his own
boutique recording company called Big Think Studios.
As an in-demand studio engineer, he began to explore cutting-edge guitar
sounds for local indie bands. Inspired by guitar heroes like Jimi
Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, Jimmy Page and Steve Vai, Hendrickson sought
to free other musicians to tap into their own unique “sonic fingerprint,”
pushing the boundaries of recorded guitar sounds through mechanics.
Coming up with the concept for the Jellifish in 1998, he did some
“bread-board model” prototyping before realizing he just might be onto
something that merited a U.S. patent. At first, Hendrickson thought he’d
simply seek a licensing deal to get a steady stream of revenue that
might have some resume value, or at least “enough royalties to pay for a
new car every three years.” The Jellifish started off as a “coffee-table
tool for prospective clients to break the ice,” but Hendrickson began
getting a rush of positive feedback from music product companies. So he
decided to make the leap out on his own rather than sign his prized
product away. Now all he had to do was find the money.
To fund his start-up, Hendrickson had no choice but pull himself up by
his Doc Martens, mortgaging his own condo, emptying his savings account,
maxing out credit cards and recruiting two high school buddies as
co-investors and founding partners: Ron Kovar, Jellifish’s vice
president of information systems, and Paul Bazan, the company’s vice
president of finance. As equal investors and full-time employees, this
brotherly trio routinely clocks in 60- to 80-hour workweeks. They
outsource the manufacturing to a Chicago-area company that uses
state-of-the-art laser technology.
The venture requires Hendrickson to constantly learn new skills. For
instance, Hendrickson, who had no previous experience with print
advertising, now finds himself routinely placing full-page ads in such
magazines Guitar World and Guitar Player. “Coming up with the very first
ad was difficult, a definite challenge,” he recalls. “I really agonized
over those first ones.” A lot was at stake: when Jellifish first
launched, the firm was chiefly direct-response, using print ads to drive
consumers to their Web site (www.jellifish.com) to purchase products. As
a result, “Right out of the gate, we are able to track the effectiveness
of each ad, each campaign, finding out what works, what doesn’t. I was
really able to hone my skills,” he says, adding “I like learning new
things all the time, and I enjoy the pressure and risks, as well as the
satisfaction, of having my skills tested by the marketplace. If I do
something wrong, we see an economic disadvantage, but if I do something
right, then we immediately see our revenues spike.”
Hendrickson gets satisfaction from seeing the real-world results of his
efforts. “I really like seeing things play out on the ruthless
battlefield of the market. I come up with new ideas all the time that
might sound good in theory, but when you put them in practice, they
don’t always work out,” admits Hendrickson, who gets a charge out of
“putting the product out there and then seeing tens of thousands of
customers using our product and enjoying it.” He’s able to monitor
customer feedback firsthand when his posse regularly attends the
network of consumer and trade shows around the nation to build buzz
about his Jellifish brand. “I have celebrity guitarists who come up to
me all the time and say, ‘Hey, I used the Jellifish on my last acoustic
album, and it sounded really cool,'” says Hendrickson, joking, “God knows
I haven’t cured cancer, but it’s still cool to have all these people
come up and share how our product has made them happier or inspired
them. I also encounter more down-to-earth people who come up and say,
‘Hey, I’m in a cover band, and when we play ‘Hotel California,’ now I
don’t have to bring my twelve-string to the gigs. I just use my Jellifish on my six-string guitar, and the audience doesn’t know the
difference!'”
Taking a cue from lessons learned during his undergrad days in
Claremont, Hendrickson believes that “Pomona really teaches you how to
think – it’s such a challenging place that, if you can make it through
Pomona, I think you’ve got the kind of tenacity it takes to be
successful in your own start-up business.” And while it may have taken
four design generations, and as many months of R&D sessions, before
Hendrickson’s team was able to transform his original mechanical
concept from raw prototype to mass-market product, when the first orders
came rolling in, they weren’t so much surprised by their instant success
as “relieved that someone out there was willing to buy our products.”
He needn’t have worried, as Jellifish’s potent sales figures spell
exponential growth: his firm’s first-year revenues totaled just $3,000
in 2002, exploding to $195,000 in 2003, and are on-track to generate
nearly half a million in profit by end of this year. Not bad for a
business that’s still housed in Hendrickson’s basement until he can
secure multi-zoned office digs down the block.
His invention has attracted some big-name fans. A-list players counted
among Jellifish users include electronica pioneer BT and a host of
in-demand session musicians who’ve played on records from everyone
including The Who, Pink Floyd, Iggy Pop, Seal, Siouxee and the Banshees,
Psychedelic Furs and Nine Inch Nails.
Launching new product lines in 2005, Hendrickson hopes to tap deeper
into the burgeoning music products market, estimated at $7 billion, with
the guitar-accessories market at approximately $400 million annually.
While Jellifish products were initially only available online,
Hendrickson is reaching out to major retail chains to boost sales,
including music-store powerhouses such as Sam Ash, The Guitar Store and
Daddy’s. Jellifish products are already distributed in 250 retailers
across North America, and are branching out into international
distributors in Australia, Indonesia and Ireland, with products being
sold in 42 countries worldwide. The goal is to eventually phase out
e-commerce altogether to concentrate on retail stores.
Building on the niche market he helped create, Hendrickson is slated to
roll out additional Jellifish product lines next quarter, including his
brand-spankin’ new “Hot Rods,” the first all-aluminum guitar bridge
pins, as well as another as-yet-undisclosed music product his firm is
currently in negotiations with a major guitar manufacturer to include in
a “starter” acoustic guitar kit, inspiring a whole new crop of young
Jeff Becks or Grant Greens in training.
For all his success, Hendrickson concedes that running his own business
cuts into his personal life. “I’ve been told over the last three years
that I’m not very good relationship material, but I think I had the same
problem when I was an investment banker or a commercial diver,” he says.
“When you do things you’re passionate about, and when you want to work
as many hours as you can – ” his voice trails off. “When I used to dive,
I’d be out of town for weeks at a time, and when you’re an investment
banker, doing 100-hour weeks isn’t uncommon. I don’t think of myself as
a workaholic, but other people might.”
And as much as he enjoys Jellifish’s swift rise, he calls his current
gig the most stressful career he’s ever had, simply because there is so
much on the line. “I live or die by the cumulative decisions I make
every day, and I have two other people’s fate in my hands,” he says.
To deal with the pressures of his daily grind, Hendrickson regularly
blows off steam at the local gym and, more recently, he’s gotten into –
of all things – domesticating feral cats in his neighborhood. “I had one
given to me by a friend, and it’s now become another project,” he says,
laughing. “In my personal life, I guess I enjoy a challenge just as much
in my professional life.”
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