Marty:
In regard to your post (9945...wireless devices), I sure hope WAVX talks to this group (N.Y. Times article attached) about including EMBASSY in their future plans.
"Regarding the question of whose cell phones or PDA systems our WAVEMETER will grace first, the answer was "look for news on our WAVX homesite."
In short, "the problem," if one could call it that, is being worked out with manufactures of wireless devices along with our presence to be had on every other possible means and channel of digital communications.
This all means very little.. I'm well aware of that, Kevin. And I apologize. I did say to Debbie that if our hardware doesn't find a natural resting place in the world's wireless ass pocket, the heads of WAVX should shoot themselves. She agreed and assured me that BEING IN THERE, EVERYWHERE is all integral with the WAVX plan to push the client-side paradigm.
March 9, 2000
New Venture Looks Beyond the PC Era
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Led by Ex-Microsoft Officials and Others
By STEVE LOHR
group of former executives from the Microsoft Corporation are expected to announce today the creation of a holding company to invest in and nurture start-ups focused on what has been called the "post-PC world," a time when the personal computer and Microsoft no longer dominate the technology markets.
The chairman and chief executive of the new venture, the Ignition Corporation, is Brad Silverberg, 45, a former senior executive at Microsoft who guided the company's catch-up strategy to embrace the Internet. He is being joined by seven former Microsoft managers who were part of that campaign, including Cameron Myhrvold, John Ludwig and Jonathan Roberts.
The founding group also includes a pair of wireless executives: Steve Hooper, former chief executive of McCaw Cellular Communications, and Kathy Iskra, the former chief financial officer of Nextlink Communications Inc.
The venture will investment mainly in companies developing wireless Internet access, the technologies that bridge the cellular telephone and the hand-held computer.
"We believe that the next big thing that is going to change the world, as the PC and the Internet did, will be wireless Internet," Mr. Silverberg said. "It's going to be one of those tidal waves in technology."
Mr. Roberts, 36, formerly headed Windows CE, Microsoft's operating system for hand-held computers. Yet today's hand-held computers -- a fast-growing market led by the popular Palm line of personal digital assistants -- are forerunners of what Mr. Roberts predicts will evolve into more sophisticated "intelligent devices." This emerging category, he said, will be able to wirelessly send and receive communications ranging from e-mail and scheduling information to alerting users to bargains at stores.
"They will be lifestyle devices, and they will go well beyond what the PC has done," Mr. Roberts said.
The software expertise of the former Microsoft executives should be a crucial asset, Mr. Silverberg said. "Software is going to play a big role in the development of the wireless Internet, just as software was the spark that brought the Internet to life," he said.
Ignition intends to make buy-and-hold investments. It will make what Mr. Silverberg called "significant but noncontrolling stakes" in a small group of companies. He said Ignition was already in discussions with a handful of companies.
"But we're not going to follow the typical venture-capital model of investing in companies, taking them public, flipping those investments and starting all over," Mr. Silverberg said. "We'll be in for the long haul. We're builders, not financial engineers."
Ignition, which is based in Bellevue, Wash., is beginning with $140 million in working capital. In addition to its founders, the company has three other investors: Qualcomm Inc., Softbank Venture Capital and the Madrona Venture Group.
Industry consultants say that while Ignition has an impressive team, its lack of international expertise may be a drawback. Western Europe has been the pace setter in wireless markets today, with 160 million cell phone users, compared with about 90 million in the United States, according to Shosteck Associates, a consulting firm in Wheaton, Md.
"In the Internet, America is the cutting edge, but in wireless we're not," said Jane Zweig, executive vice president of Shosteck Associates. "The issue for Ignition will be whether they really understand the wireless world."
The team from Microsoft is working hard at that challenge. Rather than a passive investment, Ignition represents their post-Microsoft careers.
"This is our gig," Mr. Roberts said. "We're checking the e-mail at midnight and again at 5 a.m."
At Microsoft, the term "post-PC" computing has been fiercely resisted. The hand-held business that Mr. Roberts once headed was instead deemed to be part of "PC-plus" computing. While he may have left, Mr. Roberts still echoes the Microsoft marketing message. "This is the next wave of computing, but each wave augments and amplifies the previous one," he said.
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