Anatomy of Innovation: Exodus Founder B.V. Jagadeesh (Part 2)

SM: What did you find when you arrived in Silicon Valley?

BVJ: Back in those days it was still the very early evolution of the technology. Everything was about building big systems; supercomputers, super mini-computers, mainframes, and big computers. There was no concept of desktop computing. When I joined the company they were using Prime Computers. They were one of Digital’s competitors  back in those days. The computer we were building was also going to compete against Digital. It was a super-mini type concept.

Back then you would have a dumb terminal sitting on your desk. It would get connected to the mainframe systems. From that began the evolution of the desktop, especially how Sun revolutionized the computing power for engineers. When I left Alexi and joined Bridge Communications I got my own Sun 350 on my desktop. That was like night and day. It was really phenomenal.

SM: What was your expertise by that point?

BVJ: It was in software, operating systems, and networking.

SM: How far along was Bridge when you joined?

BVJ: The acquisition was announced but it was not complete. My offer letter was still on Bridge Communications letterhead, but I was essentially joining 3Com. Bridge was a phenomenal company and it was a good shift for me moving from computers into communications. Networking was just trying to become an industry. Cisco did not even exist at that time. It was fascinating because Cisco produced a terminal server product and in parallel brought out their first router. Bridge had a terminal server, which was a flagship product, and we had produced the LAN Bridge and the WAN Bridge. When Cisco brought their product out our engineers were ridiculing the product because the design was shabby, the hardware engineering was shabby, and the product was crashing all the time.

SM: How long were you with 3Com?

BVJ: I was there for four years, from 1988 until 1992. I left 3Com because I decided I wanted to start a company of my own.

SM: What prompted that desire?

BVJ: It was always my dream, back from my Bombay days. I was inspired in Bombay because I did a summer internship in a startup company during my masters course. The person I interned for had his PhD from Case Western Reserve University. I was inspired watching him and other entrepreneurs in Bombay. I was closely tied to IEEE and was pretty active member of that organization. It gave me a great opportunity to meet with budding entrepreneurs. The dream was always there for me to do the same thing those people were doing.

As I was wrapping up at 3Com I realized I still needed some additional skills to start my own company. I had never worked on a PC until 1992. I made a conscious decision that I would go join a company that would give me some kind of expertise in the PC area. I went and joined Novell. Novell was starting a new division trying to do a router. It was going to be completely software. I had expertise at 3Com as I was one of the key architects of the Netbuilder family of routers. I was able to apply a lot of that experience to this multi-protocol router that Novell was trying to build.

Pretty soon I realized the culture of a Silicon Valley company and that of a Utah-based company were completely different. About a year and a half later I was getting frustrated with the corporate-related challenges. That is also about the time I bumped into a partner of mine who would eventually co-found Exodus Communications with me. He was also frustrated with the company he was with. We actually bumped into each other at a birthday party, and we just connected.

I was bringing the technical expertise and he was bringing the business expertise. He had the sales and marketing background. We engaged in a conversation for a couple of months to figure out what each person’s objective was and what our goals were in terms of how to build a company. We had a lot of common things as to how we wanted to build a company and treat our employees. We finally got going and started the company.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Anatomy of Innovation: Exodus Founder B.V. Jagadeesh
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