Robert Stephens

Who He Is

Robert Stephens founded Geek Squad in Minneapolis on June 16, 1994, with $200, a mountain bike, and a cell phone. His idea was simple: most people had no one to call when their computer broke, so he would come to them. He rode his bike to customers' homes dressed deliberately as a "geek," in a white short-sleeved shirt and black clip-on tie, so that people would trust him with their machines, and he gave himself the title Chief Inspector. As the company grew, he added police-style badges for agents and a fleet of black-and-white Volkswagen Beetles called Geekmobiles. In 2002, Best Buy acquired Geek Squad for $3 million and put a Geek Squad counter in most of its stores. Stephens stayed on to lead the operation for another ten years, during which it grew to more than 20,000 agents and became the core of Best Buy's multibillion-dollar services business. He left in 2012 to start new companies; Best Buy's chief executive called him "a born entrepreneur."

Why He Matters

Robert Stephens turned tech support into a brand. Before Geek Squad, fixing a computer was something you did yourself, begged a friend to do, or paid an anonymous shop to handle. He showed that support could be friendly, visible, and even fun, and that the person who shows up to fix your computer could be someone you were glad to see. For young people, he is proof that a business can be built on a single skill, that being good at helping people with technology is valuable enough to become a career, and that the whole thing can start with a bicycle.