Founders at Work.pdf

148 Founders at Work
At about the time when I was getting deeper into wireless data, I had an opportunity
to work for SPAR Aerospace, a Canadian company. They had contacted
us and asked if we wanted to bid on something that was very similar to something
that we had done before. They needed this product for what was going to
be the Canadarm2 on the International Space Station.
You have to remember that people were just starting to understand what
Canadarm1 was. And the space station was still a document before Congress,
and Canadarm2 was something that was going to be built later. You look at that,
and you go, “Holy smoke, this is what I always wanted to do! In a strange way, I
had been preparing myself to do something like this, and here it is in front of
me and I could have this contract.”
That’s when the business sense kicked in, and I had to ask the question, so I
asked SPAR, “How many of these are you going to need?” They said, “Six.” “Six
for what—initially, over time?” Although these circuit boards were going to be
very, very expensive, the opportunity for mass production was six. Then I asked,
“When are you going to need them?” “We’ll need a couple prototypes first;
then, of course, we won’t need them until the space station is built.” I said,
“When is the space station going to be built?” They said, “It hasn’t quite passed
through Congress yet.” So I had to make a decision—and I believe I chose
wisely. I gave up my childhood ambition, to continue building wireless data
products.
Ironically, years later I was meeting with Sean O’Keefe, the former director
of NASA, at his office. He was a big proponent of BlackBerry. NASA is a user of
BlackBerry. They found them extremely useful when the hurricane season
went through there—just being able to coordinate and having a backup system—but
now they use them daily. I remember Sean telling me this story that
one day he was going home (he got driven home and he does his work on his
BlackBerry on his way home), and he gets an email from someone that he recognizes
and it’s asking all these questions about the space shuttle. He’s answering
them, and he gets more questions and he’s answering them. And he says,
“This name is really familiar.” And he looks it up, and he realizes that name is on
the active duty roster. It turns out to be an astronaut on the space station, and
he was basically asking, in a nice way, when’s he coming home. Years later, ironically,
the BlackBerry allowed me to enjoy part of that childhood aspiration,
because the BlackBerries were used by NASA, and they were using them to
communicate with the International Space Station.
Livingston: Fast-forward a little bit to when you came up with the idea for the
BlackBerry. You were in your basement—it seems like you have a thing for
basements!
Lazaridis: When you try to get away from it, the basement is a nice place to
hide.
All through this, I was always looking for value. I was trying to find,
“Where’s the value of wireless data?” Early on, we had realized that wireless
push email had some serious value. But it was really tricky to do. There was a lot
of work, a lot of trial and error, a lot of R&D that had to be accomplished and