Founders at Work.pdf

146 Founders at Work
in a very hostile environment in these manufacturing plants. There were things
like arc welders and 4800-volt systems. It was a tricky thing to do. Then we
made sure that the display systems could boot from a central computer. If you
think about it, even today, we’re just starting to realize the “diskless PC”—PCs
that boot up remotely, sort of the Internet appliances today. We had to come up
with a system that could do that.
Then, of course, what was interesting was that we got to play with one of the
first IBM PCs. I remember it was just about the time when we ordered it that
the big hard drives were coming out. We changed our order from the tape system
to a hard drive system. We thought that was just a luxury. That was a
whopping 10-megabyte hard drive.
Livingston: I read that you got a grant from the Canadian government. Why
did you apply? Were you seeking money to grow?
Lazaridis: You have to realize that the early days aren’t pretty. You are worrying
about paying rent. Doug and I were sharing a leased Honda Civic. The big luxury
in that car was the option we took out for a five-speed transmission instead
of a four-speed. We lived in the same apartment, but the whole thing was just
trying to conserve expenses because we had no idea how long it would take
before we’d be established.
We heard about these government programs, and we started applying for
them. It was a lot of work to actually apply for these things, and then it was a lot
of paperwork to maintain them. In the early days, they weren’t really big grants.
They were rather small, and sometimes you wondered if it was worth all the
trouble. But it was very helpful when we needed it. As you became experienced,
and as the government agencies that we were working with became
comfortable with what we were doing and recognized that we were onto something,
the grants became more interesting.
But the real boost for us was when we started recognizing this wireless data
technology. That’s when it hit me. I was at a conference in 1987 where someone
was talking about what was happening in Japan, where they had put in a wireless
data system just for Coca-Cola. It was expensive to have to keep driving
these trucks out every 2 days covering all of Tokyo to make sure all of the vending
machines were full. They’d find that, most of the time, the vending
machines didn’t need to be refilled. The system went in and was able to pay for
itself just because of the reduced number of truck trips and fuel expenses,
because the machines were able to signal that they needed refilling. Then a
computer system was able to schedule deliveries to make sure that none of the
machines ever emptied out.
When I saw that, I remembered what my teacher had said in high school. I
looked at it and said, “This is interesting. I want to do this.” Back then, I also
remembered some of the things we did at university with a lot of signal processing
work. I had received a contract at that point because of my interest—
and this is just weird how this happens, but you happen to be in the right place
at the right time. I received interest from Cantel, which is now Rogers. The
president of Cantel asked to meet, and we started talking about this system that