Geek Squad founder leaving Best Buy

[Emily Carey]

The founding father of Geek Squad announced Wednesday he's leaving the corporate after 18 years to start out something new Robert Stephens, 42, started the corporate in Minneapolis in 1994 to supply computing assistance, The Pioneer Press said.

Stephens had the thought that pulling abreast of his bike dressed sort of a "geek" would inspire confidence in his clients for his one-man computer fix-it business, the article said.

"It's as simple as this," he wrote on his blog. "After founding The Geek Squad 18 years ago and acquiring Best Buy 10 years ago, I'm able to build new companies. I never thought I might or could last this long."

Stephens said in an MPR article every company needs a singular brand and culture if it's getting to innovate.

"That's is where you'll find me: at the intersection of 4 key areas: service, technology, culture, and makes," he said.

Best Buy bought the Geek Squad in 2002 for $3 million and built it into a central customer service component of its consumer electronic franchise, MPR said. Stephens said the service accounted for the majority of Best Buy's $3.4 billion in commission revenue.

There are now quite 20,000 Geek Squad employees – called "agents" – working for the retailer worldwide, the Press said.

 

"Best Buy wasn't great at service and that we knew we had to urge better, fast," Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn said on his blog. He said Stephens was "a born entrepreneur, which it had been only a matter of your time before his curiosity and his desire to make something new would lead him away to seem outside the walls of Best Buy."

 

 

Stephens will still advise Best Buy on a couple of projects and appearance for strategic opportunities for the Richfield-based retailer, Dunn said.

 

The Geek Squad built its identity around the image of a team of black-and-white-attired "geeks" in clip-on ties, driving to the rescue in black-and-white Volkswagen Beetles, WCCO said.

 

The announcement came on an equivalent day that Apple released its newest iPad tablet computer. Stephens joked on Twitter that he will "assume the role of iPad3.