George,
You say "I can visualize where we might end up with a bunch of worthless little companies and, hence, a bunch of worthless stock".
I agree we have to be careful here. I believe it was also you who said a couple of days ago that we need synergies between the various components if the whole of what we're building is going to be greater than the sum of the parts. [I know the converse was true with the parts greater than the whole six months ago but IMO those rule no longer apply].
To date, we felt we were seeing synergies begin to emerge even though we won't see the 'big picture" as perceived by Joe until we get the newsletter. We felt CardCall Canada could use the WorldPass switch, WorldPass also provided a call-back gateway into So. America, we had gateways providing access to Europe, switches within Europe, CyberFax gateways between NYC and SE Asia, etc. Without too much imagination, people could begin to see a big picture. I hope something along these lines is what is communicated in the newsletter.
Where I think we have to be careful is letting an IB firm gather several smaller telecom companies (ISPs or whatever) that don't fit together -- even though the sum of the individual revenues total the "right number" (somewhere between $100M and $250M). We don't want a hodgepodge -- we need a carefully architected, synergistic system. Some people can do this successfully (e.g., Bernie Evers of WorldCom, Clark McCleod (originally) of MCI) and others can't.
Bottom line: I hope Joe is getting some high-powered telecom consultation or we might not end up with something very marketable. "Anybody" with enough cash could pick up little companies that *aren't* synergistic. JMHO.
Dan |
