A light-speed celebrity
Jozef Straus, the quirky president of JDS Uniphase,
says the company's rapid success has been gratifying, but
the kisses from strange men make him uncomfortable.
SIMON TUCK
Saturday, January 22, 2000
IN OTTAWA -- Jozef Straus was walking through the lobby of a Toronto hotel when a man approached him and asked if he could kiss him on the cheek.
The stranger explained that he was a shareholder in JDS Uniphase Corp. -- and owed his new kitchen to the incredible stock market performance of the
company, where Mr. Straus is president and chief operating officer.
The man got his kiss, and Mr. Straus got yet another demonstration of his new-found status as a high-tech celebrity. His trademark black beret and bearded face
have become an increasingly common sight as JDS Uniphase has established itself as the Intel Corp. of the fibre-optics industry.
Mr. Straus, a Czechoslovakian immigrant who describes himself as shy, is now the subject of enough chat within the industry that he's often referred to by just
his first name.
He says his company's success is gratifying but some of the trappings -- the recognition, the media attention, the kisses from strange men -- make him
uncomfortable. "I prefer to keep low key," he says. "My wife says maybe I should shave my beard and stop wearing my beret. I would be invisible," he says
playfully. "But you would find me and make new pictures and then the game starts all over again."
The ascension of JDS Uniphase -- and Mr. Straus's celebrity -- picked up speed this week when the company announced its plans to acquire one of its chief
rivals, E-Tek Dynamics Inc. of San Jose, Calif.
Since merging a year ago to form a fibre-optics giant, JDS Uniphase has been moving at the pace of its own products -- the speed of light.
JDS has acquired six companies since September -- not including the planned purchase of E-Tek -- and is now considered to be the gorilla in its industry niche,
dominating the fibre-optic equipment sector in the way that Intel dominates the microprocessor industry.
Yet the 53-year-old Mr. Straus insists that he and JDS's other three co-founders never intended to create a billion-dollar giant when they founded JDS Fitel Inc. in
their Ottawa-area basements in 1981.
"I never really had that ambition," says Mr. Straus, who created the monster when he agreed one year ago to merge JDS Fitel of Nepean, Ont., with rival
Uniphase Corp. of San Jose, Calif. "We did not plan to build a billion-dollar company -- just to have fun."
In the savagely competitive technology industry, however, you either have to be predator or prey. "In order to succeed, you have to grow with the business," Mr.
Straus says. "If the business is there and the business grows, you have to maintain your market share or you'll get eaten by other sharks."
Mr. Straus admits he used to look out the window of his once-puny office and gaze at the nearby corporate headquarters of Gandalf Technologies Inc. -- a
technology industry star worth more than $100-million a year at the time -- and wonder whether his $8-million-a-year startup would ever grow to anywhere near
that size.
Gandalf has since hit corporate skid row and was sold to nearby Mitel Corp. for a paltry $14.9-million (U.S.) more than two years ago. JDS, on the other hand,
grew like a weed in a red-hot sector and then pulled off one of the industry's rare feats -- a successful merger.
Both JDS and its president are now stars. The newly merged company now dominates one of the industry's hottest spaces and its stock reflects its incredible
growth.
Known as an extremely conservative and even somewhat mysterious operation during its JDS Fitel days, the new company seems to have emerged from the
shadows and inherited some of the Silicon Valley savvy of its new partner. JDS executives now devote much more time communicating with investors, analysts
and reporters and spent much of this week explaining their $15-billion all-stock purchase this week of E-Tek.
But Mr. Straus is by no means your stereotypical introverted tech geek. He comes armed with watches on both wrists, a slightly off-the-wall sense of humour
and a joyful, capricious nature. When asked about the key to the company's success, for example, he says something about keeping volcanoes clean, one of his
frequent references to Antoine de Saint-Exup‚ry's classic The Little Prince.
And despite his avowed shyness, Mr. Straus can be quite a showman. When handed a stage, as he is at the company's annual general meeting, the PhD physics
graduate can be extremely funny and seems to relish his time in the spotlight.
Analysts and investors, meanwhile, don't care much what Mr. Straus and his colleagues do -- as long as they keep doing it. Despite a $7.50 (Canadian) or
2.2-per-cent tumble yesterday on the Toronto Stock Exchange, the company's share price has still jumped more than 53-fold in less than two years.
Although its merger with Uniphase has left it only about half-Canadian, JDS is seen as the country's fastest-growing -- perhaps even best -- technology company.
Unlike the companies behind many high-flying tech stocks, analysts agree that JDS is the real deal -- no dot-com fluke or trick of the light, but a reflection of an
excellent company, with excellent products in an excellent market.
The big question now is not whether it's a great company -- but how great. Many analysts now say JDS should be seen as the dominant player in a lucrative
market, similar to Intel Corp. in semicondutors or Microsoft Corp. in software. Mr. Straus says he can't even think that way. "Those aren't my words or Kevin
[Kalkhoven, CEO]'s words," he says. "I prefer not to even come close to saying that.
"Success in high-tech is only as good as your last quarter," he says. "Nobody has a monopoly on success. Nobody has a monopoly on brains." |
