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Bruce Sinclair swears he was of sane mind when he agreed to serve as president of WaveRider Communications Inc., a fledgling Toronto telecommunications firm. But he understands how his move to the startup from one of the largest players in high tech may have raised a few eyebrows.
Makes ya think he left Dell & went DIRECLY to wavc...
Here is the article from Globetechnology:
WaveRider brings talent aboard
Big firms were good to technology executive,
but he now likes testing the startup's waters
Thursday, February 4, 1999
CINDY WAXER
Special to The Globe and Mail
Bruce Sinclair swears he was of sane mind when he agreed to serve as president of
WaveRider
Communications Inc., a fledgling Toronto telecommunications firm. But he understands
how his move to the
startup from one of the largest players in high tech may have raised a few eyebrows.
The former president of Dell Canada and former chief executive officer of Dell Europe,
Mr. Sinclair, 47, was
instrumental in boosting the computer company's European sales from $250-million
(U.S.) to over $1-billion in a
two-year period. Besides looking after the units of Texas-based Dell Computer Corp.,
the London, Ont., native
has, over the last 20 years, held senior-level positions at leading technology firms.
So what could have convinced a former jet-setting executive of a multibillion dollar
corporation to head a company
with a research and development facility in Salmon Arm, B.C.? According to Mr.
Sinclair, all it took was a peek at
a technology that aims to offer high-speed and low-cost wireless Internet access to the
masses.
"I flew out to Salmon Arm where they were doing the product development and there
were 10 guys working in an
old real-estate office developing the technology. I got so excited about the technology,
two weeks later, I was
working for the company." Mr. Sinclair joined WaveRider in November, 1997.
Since then, WaveRider has launched the sale of its first product, the NCL135, a
wireless, external modem that
transmits Internet data using radio frequencies rather than telephone or cable lines.
The product provides wireless connections between local area networks and the
Internet, and can link two local
area networks at the equivalent speed of a T1 link, or 1.5 megabits a second.
A T1 link, a dedicated Internet connection leased from the local phone company, can
be expensive. (A Sympatico
representative in Toronto said the line could cost about $2,000 to install and another
$2,200 in monthly fees.) The
total cost of installing and maintaining the NCL135 amounts to a one-time fee of less
than $10,000.
Mr. Sinclair hopes that the NCL135 will pique the interest of many potential clients,
including Internet service
providers who wish to enhance their network services, companies in urban areas with
high concentrations of Net
surfers, and foreign countries with poor telecommunications infrastructures.
If WaveRider's executive team is any indication of the company's ability to attract
interested parties, the NCL135
should sell like hot cakes. The startup has recruited a who's who of technology
professionals from top-rated
corporations.
Scott Worthington, the former chief financial officer of Dell Canada, is currently
WaveRider's vice-president of
finance and administration. Charles Brown, the former VP and chief information officer
of Clearnet Communications
Inc., is the company's VP of marketing. And Jim Chinnick, the former VP and general
manager of Harris Corp.'s
wireless access division in Calgary, has recently been recruited as WaveRider's VP of
engineering.
Yet despite its lucrative target market and seasoned employees, WaveRider faces
daunting competition from
companies such as Lucent Technologies Inc., and 3Com Corp., the latter of which
recently announced plans to
inject $6-million (U.S.) into wireless provider and strategic ally Aether Technologies
LLC. But Mr. Sinclair seems
unfazed by the competition.
"Dell was competing against Compaq, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Digital, all these
megacompanies that people said,
'You can never succeed against these big companies.' And we succeeded very well,"
says the former Dell
executive.
However, comparisons between Dell and WaveRider end there. Whereas Dell boasts
more than 23,000
employees in 33 countries, WaveRider employs 35 people, many of whom are situated
in the company's R&D
facility in Salmon Arm -- not exactly a hub of technological advancement. Yet it's
precisely this change of pace that
prompted Mr. Sinclair to join WaveRider in the first place.
Having lived all over the world, Mr. Sinclair says WaveRider was an opportunity to
provide a more permanent place
in an Aurora, Ont., school for his 12-year-old daughter, who has attended no less than
six schools throughout her
father's high-profile career.
But more importantly, the company has enabled Mr. Sinclair to finally shift his attention
from a multibillion dollar
corporation's general ledger to his fledgling company's current $2-million (Canadian)
investment in the development
of emerging technologies.
"We spent a great deal of our efforts in my previous companies at doing nothing but
stripping costs out of the
business, which is not always that pleasant," he recalls.
Mr. Sinclair isn't surprised by the startup's ability to attract an A-list of professionals.
Nor does he pay much
attention to the risk involved in forfeiting lucrative stock options at a larger firm. After all,
he points out, it wasn't too
long ago that technology giants such as Dell had more naysayers than shareholders.
WaveRider, a public company that has listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market following a
reverse takeover of another
company in 1997, is putting the finishing touches on the LMS270 Last Mile Solution, a
wireless network that links
people to the Internet. Scheduled for commercial release late this year, it promises to
transmit data at a
high-speed rate of 135 kilobits per second without the use of telephone or cable lines.
Still, whether or not wireless Internet access will garner mainstream attention remains to
be seen. But one thing is
for certain: Mr. Sinclair has rediscovered in WaveRider the challenges he once faced at
Dell Canada and IBM
Canada. |
