Bolt-On Infrastructure Never Start Fresh

"We were still tied to Empower for another couple of years, but I was ready for my next venture. We had the office, telephone system, and accountant by this stage, so it was easy enough to bolt other businesses on to this infrastructure. Opportunities didn’t seem to have a problem finding us either. I rarely went looking but instead seemed to reside in this sort of matrix where stuff just happened."

"I couldn’t stay idle for long, though, and later that year, I had an idea for a new business. I knew a fair amount, by this stage, about the still-emerging and ever-shifting telecommunications space, and I thought I could see an opportunity. Together with an old colleague who I’d worked with back at Xerox and known for a long time, we went into Telecom and asked if we could get a dealership licence. Because of my former relationship with the company, this was a relatively easy task. We were soon set up as ‘Netco’ – it was the first business I had founded, and I retained 70 percent of it, while my business partner took the remaining 30 percent. We were selling what were referred to as ‘enhanced services’, which encompassed things like call waiting. It seemed like it would be a good business. We didn’t have any inventory and simply got paid a commission regularly from Telecom. Yet it was a slow starter for a while there in the beginning, and a humbling experience."