Read Online Losing the Signal: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of BlackBerry by Jacquie McNish, Sean Silcoff - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jacquie McNish, Sean Silcoff
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to end the dispute and resume purchasing modems, this time at a higher price. That arrangement lasted less than a year. In August 1997, U.S. Robotics again refused to buy the modems. The ensuing legal conflict dragged on until an arbitrator ordered U.S. Robotics to pay $2 million in July 1998. 7
Balsillie learned his lesson after U.S. Robotics’ first cancellation. To survive, the pint-sized company needed new customers. Balsillie’s prayers were answered by two of his most industrious salesmen: Don McMurtry, a RIM veteran of four years, and Justin Fabian, two years out of university. When Balsillie asked the pair for leads, McMurtry reached for a stack of faxes onhis desk, all inquiries from buyers. The sales team had previously paid little attention to the requests. RIM barely had enough capacity to make modems for U.S. Robotics. When he went over the faxes again, McMurtry realized a lot of Korean technology companies were inquiring about the modems.
Months later, in January 1997, Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien and a team of provincial premiers and corporate chiefs flew to Korea on a trade mission. Included on the trip were three young executives who were pretty well unknown to the rest of the Canadian delegation. Balsillie, McMurtry, and Fabian worked fast in Korea: they signed deals negotiated earlier to sell more than ten thousand modem cards, enough to keep RIM alive. For the RIM trio the trip was a victory lap. “We dumped a lot of radio modems,” McMurtry says. After the bruising encounter with U.S. Robotics, RIM’s co-CEOs would remain wary of U.S. tech behemoths. “It was really the awakening for Mike and Jim as to how savage the computer industry is,” McMurtry says.
The U.S. Robotics experience had a profound impact on Balsillie. RIM could no longer operate as an obliging laboratory of ideas, a place where innovator-in-chief Lazaridis shared thoughts about wireless data innovations. In a jungle of technology predators, the small company had to be as ruthless as the giants. For Balsillie, every potential customer, supplier, and business partner was a potential opponent. “It was a massively predatory and high-stakes gambit all day, every day,” he remembers. “If you’re sentimental and emotional, you’ll get eaten up. You’re dead.”
The dark view was a stark contrast with Lazaridis’s sunny faith that RIM was destined to succeed through innovation. “Jim believed everyone was out to kill us and he couldn’t trust anyone,” Lazaridis says. “I had a different point of view. I liked long-term relationships. I believed our capabilities allowed us to succeed.”
Though philosophically opposed about many things, the partners were united in a belief that RIM needed a more ambitious strategy to prosper. Balsillie was convinced they had to borrow from the playbook of the ravenous technology trailblazer, Microsoft. Based in Redmond, Washington, Microsoft had transformed itself into a global titan by positioning its core product, the MS-DOS operating system, as an invasive force inside the nation’s computers, grabbing an ever-bigger share of desktop applications. By the mid-1990s, 86 percent of U.S. computers operated with Microsoft systems delivering everything from Internet searches to games. 8
“Everyone wanted to do a Microsoft, get a product like DOS, then wedgethe business open, dominate the economics, and kill anyone trying to make a product,” Balsillie says. To chase this dream, RIM would develop a signature wireless product. That product, Lazaridis was convinced, was a mobile message device. Not the expensive and awkward Newtons and Simons that belly-flopped, but a small, simple, inexpensive device that did one thing well: send and receive digital messages instantly.
In 1996 three major companies were leading the quest for the perfect palm-sized communicator. Referring to a scene in one of his favorite films, the 1981 blockbuster
Raiders of the Lost Ark,
Lazaridis was
Balsillie learned his lesson after U.S. Robotics’ first cancellation. To survive, the pint-sized company needed new customers. Balsillie’s prayers were answered by two of his most industrious salesmen: Don McMurtry, a RIM veteran of four years, and Justin Fabian, two years out of university. When Balsillie asked the pair for leads, McMurtry reached for a stack of faxes onhis desk, all inquiries from buyers. The sales team had previously paid little attention to the requests. RIM barely had enough capacity to make modems for U.S. Robotics. When he went over the faxes again, McMurtry realized a lot of Korean technology companies were inquiring about the modems.
Months later, in January 1997, Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien and a team of provincial premiers and corporate chiefs flew to Korea on a trade mission. Included on the trip were three young executives who were pretty well unknown to the rest of the Canadian delegation. Balsillie, McMurtry, and Fabian worked fast in Korea: they signed deals negotiated earlier to sell more than ten thousand modem cards, enough to keep RIM alive. For the RIM trio the trip was a victory lap. “We dumped a lot of radio modems,” McMurtry says. After the bruising encounter with U.S. Robotics, RIM’s co-CEOs would remain wary of U.S. tech behemoths. “It was really the awakening for Mike and Jim as to how savage the computer industry is,” McMurtry says.
The U.S. Robotics experience had a profound impact on Balsillie. RIM could no longer operate as an obliging laboratory of ideas, a place where innovator-in-chief Lazaridis shared thoughts about wireless data innovations. In a jungle of technology predators, the small company had to be as ruthless as the giants. For Balsillie, every potential customer, supplier, and business partner was a potential opponent. “It was a massively predatory and high-stakes gambit all day, every day,” he remembers. “If you’re sentimental and emotional, you’ll get eaten up. You’re dead.”
The dark view was a stark contrast with Lazaridis’s sunny faith that RIM was destined to succeed through innovation. “Jim believed everyone was out to kill us and he couldn’t trust anyone,” Lazaridis says. “I had a different point of view. I liked long-term relationships. I believed our capabilities allowed us to succeed.”
Though philosophically opposed about many things, the partners were united in a belief that RIM needed a more ambitious strategy to prosper. Balsillie was convinced they had to borrow from the playbook of the ravenous technology trailblazer, Microsoft. Based in Redmond, Washington, Microsoft had transformed itself into a global titan by positioning its core product, the MS-DOS operating system, as an invasive force inside the nation’s computers, grabbing an ever-bigger share of desktop applications. By the mid-1990s, 86 percent of U.S. computers operated with Microsoft systems delivering everything from Internet searches to games. 8
“Everyone wanted to do a Microsoft, get a product like DOS, then wedgethe business open, dominate the economics, and kill anyone trying to make a product,” Balsillie says. To chase this dream, RIM would develop a signature wireless product. That product, Lazaridis was convinced, was a mobile message device. Not the expensive and awkward Newtons and Simons that belly-flopped, but a small, simple, inexpensive device that did one thing well: send and receive digital messages instantly.
In 1996 three major companies were leading the quest for the perfect palm-sized communicator. Referring to a scene in one of his favorite films, the 1981 blockbuster
Raiders of the Lost Ark,
Lazaridis was
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