In March of 1985 I had the battlefield promotion to become CEO, actually interim CEO, of Excelan. My co-founder Inder Mohan Singh had just quit. Till then I was the VP of engineering and  a true hard core Silicon Valley techie.

Excelan was founded in April of 1982 to provide networking for a plethora of computers. Old established order of mainframes and minicomputers was giving way to desk-top computers and back-end servers. IBM PC was announced in September of 1981. Sun Micro-system was formed in February of 1982. UNIX operating system was coming on its own and there were about 50 start-ups building super computers around various powerful micro-processors and standard busses that were being announced on a regular basis. In fact UNIX itself had not standardized yet, there were several versions of it around then. Networking standards for both hardware and software had not quite emerged yet. There were various topologies that were being pushed: Token Ring (IBM),  Token Bus, CSMA-CD (Ethernet); also, base-band and broad-band at he physical layer. Standards for protocol software also had not firmed up yet. IBM was pushing SNA, DEC had its DECnet; Apple announced its Apple-Talk; DARPA’s TCP/IP was built into BSD UNIX that Sun Micro-System had adopted; Xerox was pushing XNS. Various industry groups were also pushing OSI protocols. As for as busses were concerned, we had Multibus by Intel, VME bus by Motorola, Unibus and Q-bus by DEC, PC bus by IBM and many more!

It was truly wild west out there. Inder was unable/unwilling to chose between various options. Excelan quickly got bogged down doing too many things; meaning doing nothing useful for customers. Even though, we had done Ethernet boards for Multibus, VME bus, Unibus, Q-bus and PC bus, we had no software and drivers for these boards. So we were pedaling raw hardware that end users were unable to use. Many OEMs signed up with us to design our boards in their systems. It was very hard to support them as they had various operating systems and needs. We got very busy but company had no focus and no story for the market place. Revenues were very slow to materialize. Company was very under-resourced for the job it was trying to do.

To make things even more interesting, Inder also had decided to do a network analyzer that Excelan was ill prepared to handle. Network Analyzer was seen by Inder as easy money and he had spent about a million dollars to buy inventory to build about 100 units. Company got in financial trouble as it had burnt through most of the capital it had raised by early 1985. We were still burning about about $150K/month and had a little less than a million in the bank when Inder was let go. I was told by the board to conserve cash while they went looking for a CEO to replace Inder. It was very clear that we were not going to last more than six months unless some thing drastic was done.

As my first day as interim CEO, I decided to let go about a third of the company go extend my runway to about 9 months. I also decided to sharply focus company the company, decided not to do any more hardware; just stay with what we already had and focus on software. I hired contractors to port publicly available TCP/IP software to our boards and decided to narrow down the various other options to just support networking IBM PC’s to couple of standard UNIX machines and to DEC minicomputers. This narrow focus reduced complexity by almost 99%. We were going to connect your PC (which were selling almost 100,000 a day by then); to your UNIX Machines that were selling about 10,000 a month; to your DEC mini-computers that were selling about 3000 a month. All this using Ethernet and TCP-IP! We had narrowed our bet and market but had a sharp story to tell this market place.  I also, put Network Analyzer on fire sale to clear out the inventory. All this had to be done in 90 days, so as to have enough time for marketing and sales.

90 days later we opened up an ad campaign, spending $50K per month.  It was a risky bet again as this additional cash burn was to shorten the runway. But , it was an almost instant hit. Revenues started to grow rapidly and within three months we were profitable and cash flow positive! The board which had no faith in me was now looking with amazement as to what had been achieved.

Here is the ad that ran!

excelan-ad

After being laid off from RCA Computer Systems, I moved from West Palm Beach, Florida to Sunnyvale in Northern California in December of 1971. I had a job with Singer-Links. I also had a job from Scientific Data Systems (SDS), later to become Xerox Data Systems, in El Segundo in Southern California. But I liked Northern California better for some reason.

Singer was doing Flight Simulators. Flight Simulators were transforming from analog machines to digital machines and I was one of the first digital engineers hired by Singer. I went to do flight simulators for various Navy and Air Force planes; among them were E2C , F4, F111, C130 and B52 bomber.

The area that came to be known later as Silicon Valley was still called Santa Clara Valley. It was full of fruit and flower orchards, and not yet the sprawl it has since become. Intel, National and AMD were start ups. New Semiconductor start-ups were sprouting up on a daily basis. Signetics, Intersil, MMI ; just to name a few were founded after i got here. Valley did have established companies; IBM, HP, Lockheed, Philco Ford, Memorex and Kaiser Electronics come to mind. IBM Compatible companies were sprouting also. Amdahl  was started by the Gene Amdahl, who was the architect of IBM 360 and IBM 370 mainframes. Name Silicon valley was first used around 1974 in gossip rag ( a paper version of a modern day blog)  that used to circulate weekly. I can’t recall the person’s name who published it, he sure used to have juicy gossip about who is moving from where to where and who is doing what to whom.

Having being laid off a couple of times, I was anxious to focus on stability and growth. I was determined never to be laid off ever again, or at least not be blind sided by it. I always had my resume ready and was applying for jobs all over all the time. I interviewed just about every company there was in computer business. It was several years before I was confident enough to stop doing that. I did keep up with continuing education by taking early bird courses offered for working professionals in systems, software, business and law at Santa Clara University.

I had taken to Silicon Valley like fish takes to water. It was pure nerdy environment. I also had become and took the look of a proper nerd, with plastic pocket protector and all. I started to shine at my job very quickly . My job designation was  ” Logic Designer”, a new field which was different from “Circuit Designer”. When I started doing logic design, the building blocks were very basic. “And”. “Or” and “Not” gates and single flip flops. We did not have to use even more basic components like transistors. We built massive systems, using tens of thousands gates and flip flops and hundreds of boards. It was all done using paper and pencil and drafting table. All engineers had drafting table in their offices.

Having been gone from India six years, I and Ann took our first vacation to India in November of 1973. It was a great family reunion. I had left as a 22 year old and came back as 28 year old married man. I had totally lost touch as the news from India was sparse. India had become very cynical country since I had left. My family, especially my father took an immediate liking to Ann. Right after I came back, news came that my father passed away. It was hard on me as I could not afford to go back.

Suffice it to say I excelled at what I did at my job. I got couple of patents and was promoted frequently to become a senior staff engineer, the highest rung on the technical ladder, in about half a dozen years. The things couldn’t be better positioned on the professional front. On personal front, I and Ann also settled down nicely. Bought our first house in San Jose. Raj-Ann came along in 1976 and Ben in 1979. We were enjoying upper middle class life. I also became a US Citizen on 1975. I sponsored my brother Bobby for green card and he came over on less than six months in 1976. I eventually sponsored all my brothers and sisters even though they had no immediate plans to come US. It came in handy later as they got their approvals before the the changes in the law.

I went back to India again after six more years in 1979, this time with Ann, Raj-Ann and Ben. It was hard as it was post emergency India. Janata Party government was in power and it was tottering. “Indira in India and India is Indira” slogans were still on walls all over. I had to go back for my sisters wedding in 1980. This time I returned with my brother Upi. So slowly family was starting to migrate to US. All my 5 brothers and only sister, even my mother, eventually emigrated from India. Last of my brother Tony came in 1991. We are an extended family of 38 people in SV now.

By 1980, every thing was going rosy for me until I realized that life had been passing me by. I was about 35 and was becoming a lifer at a defense contractor. It was considered an ultimate sin in the valley. I had reached the highest rung of technical ladder and had no prospect of getting on the managerial ladder. Companies like Apple, Atari and had started. I was feeling left behind. Then I was totally destabilized as a person after I read in the papers that one of my underling, David Jackson who had quit a couple of years earlier, ha d started a computer  company. I could not bear the thought of being an employee when David had become an entrepreneur. I had to get back to the commercial world.

I quit my job at Singer but soon discovered that I was not seen as a star I thought I was. Defense contractors were looked down upon by commercial companies. I had to take a big pay cut to get a job at Zilog. It was not that long before I rose to the top again at Zilog.

By late 1981 I was ready to try my hand on my own. IBM PC had been introduced  and the world had changed. There were a plethora of computers out there and I felt some body is going to have to connect them. Digital, Intel and Xerox jointly announced a protocol for networking called Ethernet and also announced that they will have chips ready in about 3 years. I saw my opening as I did not have to wait for the Ethernet chips. Being a hardware  wizard I felt I could implement the protocols using off the shelf available chips.

Thus Excelan was born in early 1982.

 

 

Entrepreneurs are the main source of jobs and new wealth in the modern society. In US almost all the new jobs are created by companies that have been formed since 1975. As a matter of fact, the companies that dominated the Fortune 100 list then have all shed employees and have smaller payroll now than back then. Familiar names like IBM, GM, Ford, US Steel, GE, Honeywell are much leaner now than they were back then. Giant retailers like Sears, JC Penneys, Macy’s have been humbled by the likes of Amazon and eBay.