David Jackson (name changed to protect the guilty) was the reason I became an entreprenur in 1982.

David worked me for a couple of years at Singer Link in Sunnyvale in late 70s. He, like me, was also an immigrant; albeit from UK. He was a decent engineer but by no means he was comparable to an IITian like me.

He left his job at Singer-Link around 1980. Around that time, I was beginning to feel in a rut. Having been at Link for almost 10, I was getting no satisfaction any more. I was making good money, as a matter of fact, very good money and had good happy life at home. My daughter was four and my sone was 1. At 35, I was at the top of my game and but felt that I had gone as far as I was likely to go. Indians were not in management and were not seen as managemnet material. We were typecast at techies. My boss used to tell me that he would hate to lose me as an engineer.

One fine morning, reading the local news paper I saw the news that David Jackson had started a computer company. It was a Z80 based, CPM machine for businesses. This is around the time Steve Jobs had started Apple computer. I was totally destabilized as an individual. Why can’t I be an entrepreneur like David? I for sure felt superior to David in every way; but here he had become an entreprenur but I was stuck as lifer, albeit a well-paid lifer, a defense contractor.

I just couldn’t sleep any more. I was miserable with my life. My wife started to worry about me. What has happened to you, she asked? I told her that I wanted to leave my job and try my hand at entreprenurship. She reminded me that I made good money, was respected at the job; we had two little children and two cars that needed to be paid for. Then she asked me if she was the one making me unhappy?

No, I said emphatically. It is that David Jackson who has made me miserable. He is an entreprenur and I am stuck at this miserable job. She said, I should do whatever I need to do to be happy but children must not suffer!

I left my job at Singer and took a big pay cut to get a job at Zilog, a commercial company. Having worked for a defence contractor, I felt I needed to find out if I was any good in the commercial world. I left Zilog a year later to start Excelan in April of 1982. I have never looked back.

My advice to people is not to stagnate in your comfort zone but to find your David Jackson!

With WeWork, UBER and Lyft fiascos, people are starting to wonder what is going on. Here is my assessment…

In the beginning, there were founders, angels and VCs. Their job was to create a robust fast growing and a profitable company with proven markets. They needed more capital than the VCs could provide to scale up the company. There was also a need to provide liquidity to early players and establish a market value of the company. Hence, an IPO!

Underwriters were needed for an IPO to firmly underwrite an offering. They assessed the market and came up with a market price that they could get behind . They created the demand and built the book of customers.Stocks were then floated at a price which satisfied only half of the demand so there will be demand if somebody flipped the shares. Underwrites were required to stablize the market by stepping in if there was no demand and price started to sink.

I saw this process first hand and it worked like a charm. All this was great as the company’s had a lot of growing to do and a lot of value creation was still to be done. Public investors expected to see a rapid value creation and stock appreciation.

Then came the massively funded Unicorns. They took all the available VC money, then took the wall street money to fund further and they sold in the secondary markets to individuals. The price of the stock had no real meaning as the late stage deals were highly structured and had huge downside protection.

Companies are not proven and are still incurring huge losses. Founders and employees have already been cashed out and are living the rich life. The fire in the belly is extinguished. No more money is available from current investors so stock has to be foisted on the unsuspecting public!

How do you sell such a stock in an IPO? Current and future value is unknown and is very dubious. Stock is already widely held and there are really no buyers left in the market; everybody is waiting to sell!

Is it a fault of Wall Street bankers? VCs? Founders?