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Founders at Work.pdf

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Mike Lazaridis 147<br />

they had just bought called Mobitex. It was a wireless d<strong>at</strong>a system, and they<br />

needed someone to write some software and help them make it work.<br />

It was a strange request, but I went and saw wh<strong>at</strong> they had bought and realized<br />

th<strong>at</strong> this was brand new stuff. It was very primitive, and the document<strong>at</strong>ion<br />

hadn’t even been fully transl<strong>at</strong>ed from Swedish yet. I remember meeting with<br />

someone and he said, “If you can make this stuff work, you’ve got the contract.”<br />

Michael Barnstijn, one of my early partners, looked <strong>at</strong> it and said, “Mike, I think<br />

I can read this well enough”—because he was from the Netherlands—“th<strong>at</strong> we<br />

could probably get this stuff to work.” We spent the next few hours hooking<br />

everything up, and we surprised them because we got it working.<br />

We got the contract and started writing software to make it all work, and the<br />

rest was history. We wrote most of the very first wireless protocol software,<br />

applic<strong>at</strong>ion programming interface (API), the development tools—all the early<br />

stuff for the first wireless d<strong>at</strong>a networks.<br />

Th<strong>at</strong> was our first break. Th<strong>at</strong> was our first chance to break out of a consulting<br />

role and really start producing products.<br />

Livingston: Would you say this was one of the biggest turning points for RIM?<br />

Lazaridis: I would say it was the beginning of a turning point. No one knew<br />

wh<strong>at</strong> wireless d<strong>at</strong>a was. You couldn’t go in and apply for loans to do wireless<br />

d<strong>at</strong>a. It was bizarre. Cell phones were just happening—you started seeing<br />

lawyers and real est<strong>at</strong>e agents with cell phones. When you started talking about<br />

wireless d<strong>at</strong>a, no one knew wh<strong>at</strong> you were talking about. Think about it; there<br />

were no computers in people’s homes <strong>at</strong> the time. It was a very rare occurrence<br />

to see a computer in somebody’s home. They weren’t dialing in to the Internet.<br />

Everything back then was very specific. It was proprietary; you were dialing in<br />

to servers. So it was a different world than it is today.<br />

Livingston: If you were doing things th<strong>at</strong> were so ahead of their time, how were<br />

you so successful?<br />

Lazaridis: The tricky part was, how do you intercept a market trend? How do<br />

you intercept an industrial trend? How do you package wh<strong>at</strong> you’ve learned and<br />

wh<strong>at</strong>’s happening in the technology space so th<strong>at</strong> it has new value to customers?<br />

How do you find those customers?<br />

Wh<strong>at</strong> we learned with Mobitex and l<strong>at</strong>er D<strong>at</strong><strong>at</strong>ech was th<strong>at</strong> there were<br />

some really interesting applic<strong>at</strong>ions th<strong>at</strong> were being developed, and we<br />

were right there while it was happening. But it took a lot of faith. You call it<br />

vision, but it’s a combin<strong>at</strong>ion of vision and faith th<strong>at</strong> 1) it’s going to happen<br />

someday, and 2) it has value, and 3) you can actually accomplish it in an economic<br />

way and promote it so th<strong>at</strong> you can fund the development and growth of<br />

the business. Th<strong>at</strong>’s pretty tricky stuff.<br />

Livingston: Can you tell me about any of the other major turning points?<br />

Lazaridis: One of the dreams th<strong>at</strong> I had all through high school was to build<br />

some kind of space-based technology. You have these visions when you are<br />

young of working for NASA and building a space probe or part of a spaceship.

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