Relay Network in Radnor is the brainchild of Matt Gillin, who had a front-row seat with his eight siblings watching his father run a mini golf course business.

From those earlier experiences, most members of the family went on to own their own businesses, writes Paige Gross for Technical.ly.

He launched his first company, Ecount, in the late 1990s, with Paul Raden. The firm was sold to Citigroup in 2007.

Gillin had an experience involving a text and customer service link from AT&T that inspired him to create Relay.

He realized if a company could use text and a smart link, it could deliver incredible customer service. From there, Relay was born.

Relay is up from 30 million daily users to 80 million and it has doubled its 50 staffers to 110.

His biggest startup advice is to avoid quitting.

“It sounds ridiculous, but don’t quit. There’s always a solution, even if it’s your third, fourth, fifth try,” Gillin said. “Ecount had a successful exit, but that business was dead on arrival a few times, and we always found a way.”

Read more about how the Relay Network in Radnor got started and about founder Matt Gillin’s inspiration at Technical.ly.

Matt Gillin talks about how to improve the customer experience.