Ortel Corporation

First, he was with AT&T.

AT&T, I think, then they acquired Lucent Technologies.

I forget.

Then he transferred over to Lucent Technologies.

And this is in the nineties and his 401k, which again, this is like saying late nineties, his 401k was right around 80 to a hundred thousand dollars in a 401k, which, you know, that's especially for, you know, say 1998, that's a really big nest egg that you've got, right.

For him having three kids and everything.

And he's like, no, no, it's a good company and it's going to come back.

And I think that his 401k drops from roughly $100,000 down to, I think, maybe $25,000 or $30,000.

The, the companies had already...

Companies like Eriks- Ericsson, Ericsson, Alcatel, Nortel, uh, Lucent Technologies, they had already Built com-- the complete network of base stations of the, uh, second generation, and they were preparing for third generation and investing for third generation fiber optics and things.

And Telefónica just didn't order.

Not only Telefónica, but American Tele- nobody in the, in the world.

How about if we just break out and do this on our own?" So in '98, we started what we call the New Media Company.

Uh, we started producing all of the digital videos for, uh, Lucent Technologies for all their offerings-

Yeah

... and services when DSL was first coming online.

There's actually a fourth choice.

And Lucent actually took this fourth choice.

Do you remember Lucent? Lucent used to be Bell Labs.

Bell Labs used to be AT&T's R&D division, but when AT&T was thrown into the competitive marketplace, AT&T spun off Bell Labs and gave it this new name, Lucent.

Lucent was really a technology company.

But one of the problems was Lucent was saddled with a dividend policy that AT&T gave it from its old day.

So Lucent had this problem.

They had to pay big dividends while investing like a technology company facing the risk of a technology company.

But you can see why some companies went down this road, which paid dividends, issued shares.

But you know what Lucent did? Lucent, of course, was Bell Labs.

Bell Labs used to be part of AT&T.

So when AT&T spun off Bell Labs, first they gave it a new name to make it sound like a technology company.

They saddled it with AT&T's old stockholders.

You're saying, so what? AT&T's old stockholders were the ultimate dividend people, right? Because they'd been used to dividends for, what, 100 years.

And Bell Labs or Lucent was given those stockholders.

So they're facing exactly this problem.

So it's fun to see many years later where this goes.

At the time when I started my career at Bell Labs as a member of technical research and development at Lucent Technologies, It was really around kind of high-speed telecommunications.

So for whether it was undersea transmission networks or long-distance optical communications, how are we going to...

When the internet was really just taking off in, say, 99, 2000, 2001, it was how are we going to get more bandwidth? Bandwidth being the limiting factor at the time until we had the big dot-com bust, which then left a lot of bandwidth glut that was then...

So we were backed by Sequoia, Greylock, U.S. Venture Partners, and we effectively built a semiconductor fab and packaging line from scratch, right? And up in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

And we were all living in the Allentown area at the time.

Allentown was very familiar with what it took to the requirements of building a fab given Lucent's presence there.

So the groundwork was laid from a permitting perspective for us to go do it, which in retrospect, building a fab in a A residential area or near residential area is stunning, right? And we were competing with companies probably with 100 times our capital, the Fujitsu's or the Sumitomo's of the world at that time, also Lucent, Nortel, and a whole host of other European companies like an Ericsson or...

Yeah.

So found that out and I was like, "Well, the biggest challenge here is being in front of people, so let me do that." So I went into sales, uh, AT&T and Lucent Technologies.

Went to...

You know, things were going really well.

We'll become a creditor to you, and with that money we've given you, you will give it back to us." That puts you in messy legal situations.

Windstar famously sued what remained of Lucent Technologies and won.

The bankruptcy courts won and ripped that away from Lucent.

So that never goes well.