A Public University’s Online Journey: Hunt Lambert of CSU (Part 2)

SM: What did you do after you left MIT?

HL: I went to another startup company that developed a software application for predicting human behavior. It was very good, so good that it became a top-secret program, and that was the end of the startup for me.

SM: Did that become a defense project?

HL: It did, and I was not interested in making that direction my career. I wanted to grow venture-funded and high-growth companies. I left that startup and joined Data General. I worked in their Unix third-party software programs, where we developed a commercial Internet with 20,000 host computers running shared office automation all over the world in 1985.

SM: What did you do after that?

HL: I left Data General because I had recommended the senior management team abandon their Eclipse architecture and proprietary operating system and go to RISC architecture with a UNIX operating system so we could rapidly implement this global product. They did not want to do that, but I felt if they did not do it, Sun Microsystems would put them out of business. I also recommended that they buy Sun, an idea that they rejected. The rest is history.

I then looked for the biggest network I could find, which was one of the regional Bell operating companies that had come out of the breakup of AT&T. I went to a Fortune 100 and got involved in startups inside that company. I helped launch the cellular telephone business, the data services business, and many other ideas. We launched over a dozen businesses out of my group. We took the ideas, got board funding, and turned them into things.

The biggest company we spun out was Nextel. We launched them out of my group based on an idea to buy up all the specialized mobile radio frequencies and turn it into a third cellular provider. Because US West did not have a top 10 city and we knew that the top 10 markets were worth much more in the wireless world, I was the person who handled US West’s strategy to get into top 10 cities with wireless. We put a secret program together and built the entity that we later had to divest for regulatory reasons, which is how Motorola ended up with their piece of Nextel.

SM: Your background sounds as though it has been intensely focused on networking.

HL: Yes, I would say it has been about the intense utilization of networks for solutions. I was not necessarily building them, but I understood what to do with them. I took my ideas overseas as well. I opened US West’s international headquarters in London with a small team. We proceeded to put wireless, cable TV and data communication businesses in 12 countries over the next three years. I spent three years flying all over the world putting together deals to launch companies that range from TeleWest and Mercury in the UK to WestTel in Hungary. We put businesses in Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Poland, Brazil, and the former Soviet Union.

SM: What year does that bring us up to?

HL: That would have been 1989, 1990, and 1991.

This segment is part 2 in the series : A Public University’s Online Journey: Hunt Lambert of CSU
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