Mark Richer Hi tech: A half-life 12-May-2006

Oh dear…



“Nobody knows anything”

William Goldman

The numbers

 26 years  1 misspent youth  1m air miles  3 startups founded  1 receivership  1 NASDAQ IPO  1 Cisco acquisition  0 days of work Care, but not too much

Overview

 Cambridge 82-85 — — 24/20+ work somehow  Intelligent Software 85  Madge Networks 86-94  Calista 95-00  Codian 02->

Intelligent Software 85

 6 months programming then…  … a transit van at midnight  Surprisingly, this was good You can’t really tell if something is good or bad until much, much later. So chill.

Madge Networks 86-94

 Token Ring LAN Adapters  5 people -> peak of 1,500  NASDAQ IPO in 1993  Only external financing 3Com in 89 Recruitment. Excellence. Patience.

Madge Networks aside #1

 Early target was to clone IBM  -> we supported IBM PC LAN  > first customer wanted NetWare…  …and we were useless Don’t argue with the customers.

It is normally less work to just fix it.

Madge Networks aside #2

128k DRAM 99000 16-bit μP MAC & PHY System Interface PC LAN

Calista 95-00

 Interfacing to proprietary PBXs  12 people to 4.5 to 25  50/50 Partnership and not  Market creation: good or bad?

Market creation – just say no

Calista aside

 Voice mail interfaces 5/10  Telecommuting 3/10 or 10/10  Voice recording interfaces 9/10 Listen to the customers.

Codian 02-

 Video Conferencing infrastructure  12 people to 60  $0m, $1m, $10m No reruns.

Themes

 UK ex-Cambridge R&D  Global Sales  Never be a UK/European company  Start small, think big, believe  Ownership  No market creation  Incremental development  Incremental product lines

Recipe

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Team Product Quick, cheap α/β Try to sell Listen. If near fix; goto 4 else goto 2 When saleable: recruit sales force, marketing, production etc

Thank you

 Whatever you do… shake the world a little and

have fun

 [email protected]

 [email protected]

Thank You