behind the towers

During the winter of 1987, we interviewed candidates for the Vice President, Sales and Marketing. Dave and Paul took the lead, of course, but Steve and I got a few minutes with each one. It was clear to all that we needed to hear the voice of our prospective customers for the usual reason. Who were the buyers of our products; what features and functions did they want; what price would they pay; what was the best way to reach them; who was the competition; and so on. Lots of questions, few answers.

Early in the process, Dave and Paul met Richard (Dick) Kendrick who was at the time vice president and general manager of sales and service for Codex Corporation, a division of Motorola. Codex was known for their high-speed modems (9600-19.2k bps) and for a private label version of the Stratacom frame relay multiplexer. Dick impressed Paul and Dave with his extensive knowledge of the “WAN market”, having sold into an impressive list of Fortune 1000 accounts, possessing a personable style and no-nonsense approach to sales. Dick was not a “marketing guy”, purely sales-oriented, but that’s what every startup needs, right? Products and sales are the two most important components of a startup company – everything else is overhead.

Dick had an extensive background in channel sales, selling Codex modems and muxes through large distributors. Codex’ customers knew what they wanted to buy, product-wise, and made their purchasing decisions based largely on price, delivery, service and quality. All modems do roughly the same thing, so users were not persuaded by extra features or functions. Dick understood how Codex customers behaved, which distributors to work with, made sure service issues were properly followed up and resolved. His success served to maintain the Codex (and Motorola) reputation for making and servicing high-quality products.

Everyone agreed that Dick’s expertise and experience were important for the job. But Steve and I thought that though they were necessary, they weren’t sufficient. Wellfleet was diving into the teeth of the systems business, competing directly with Digital Equipment, BBN, Ungermann-Bass, Bridge Communications, VitaLink, and others. We thought that our founding Vice President, Sales and Marketing needed to come from the computer industry, knew how to establish a direct field sales and systems engineering operation, and understood the market for internetworking – the interconnection of (mostly) Ethernet local networks.

I didn’t understand Paul and Dave’s enthusiasm for Dick in this role. We had already dealt with this issue at InterLAN, specifically the confusion that developed by first selling Ethernet interface boards and software to system integrators and OEM customers, then later introducing the NTS10 network terminal server as a systems product which required direct sales and support. Essentially, InterLAN was in two different, distinct businesses at the time of the company’s sale to Micom Systems in the spring of 1985. I was under the impression that all of the founders implicitly understood that Wellfleet was targeting a new segment of the systems business – internetworking – and that our sales and marketing efforts would be tailored to serving that end. I guess not.

So Dick Kendrick was hired as Wellfleet’s founding sales and marketing executive. “That guy can sell!” was the rationale. I wasn’t convinced, but it wasn’t my call. I have rarely been shy about sharing my opinion on any subject. I had been through basic training at Fort Polk, officer candidate school at Fort Benning, and the US Army’s signal officer basic course at Fort Gordon. I knew when to salute and say “yes, sir!” when my opinion didn’t matter. It was time to drive on.

I intended to give Dick whatever support that he needed to be successful. I told him that the first person that he should hire was an experienced product manager as the engineering group needed a clearly defined set of features and functions to implement in our first products. We also needed a product road map to define how the products would be enhanced and improved over time based on customer needs and feedback from their experiences with the early versions of our product line. He understood that right away and brought in Mark Strangio, a Codex veteran that Dick knew well and clearly respected.

I recognized Mark as the affable, hard-working, talented person that he was and continues to be (full disclosure – Mark and I remain close friends to this day).  Mark and Dick made quite a pair in the office. They fed off one another’s insights, comments, good-natured ribbing, and joke telling. When both of them were in Dick’s office (the management team had floor-to-ceiling walled offices with glass inserts in the doors), they were frequently smoking cigarettes, filling the office with thick clouds of second-hand smoke. Oh, the 80’s. Sometimes I would go in and sit with them for a while, listening to their banter, and helping them develop our approach to product marketing, the sales message, and who might be good candidates for initial sales. I fully expected to be involved in the initial customer engagements, and I wanted to be as prepared as possible before we set out.

Mark was prolific. He developed the company’s first product collateral, sales brochures, and an in-depth set of slides to be used for customer presentations and seminars. The slides would later be copied onto the pages of a seminar brochure that we would print in the thousands for scores of seminars around the world. He was instrumental in establishing our first reseller relationships with Network Systems Corporation, Minneapolis and Newbridge Networks in Toronto. Mark worked tirelessly alongside many of our developers and systems engineers who followed Mark to Wellfleet.

Paul Sylvia was Dick’s first sales hire as Eastern Region Sales Director. Paul was at heart a high-octane sales guy, anxious to get in front of a customer, present the product line, press for the order, and move on to the next prospect. The company’s distribution strategy may have utilized regional resellers and dealers; it was Paul’s approach to get in front of the end-customer directly, make the sale, and provide order fulfillment through partners. This was more in line with my view of how we would successfully sell Wellfleet’s products, but left unaddressed the need for field systems engineers and customer support.

Still, Paul Sylvia was a sales dynamo. He was so energetic, and focused on closing a sale that he would often describe product features that the engineers were only contemplating without making any commitments as to delivery dates. In other words, Paul was shameless about selling futures. Everyone in the industry did it to some extent, but usually only after a legal song-and-dance involving non-disclosure agreements, and no mention of promised delivery, if ever. With Paul, it was just part of the normal process. He was amazing in his sincerity, and our customers had tremendous respect for him.

Paul Sylvia came from Codex after Mark. Next to be hired was Benson Rosen (whom I termed “the man with two last names”) as the Eastern Region Customer Support Director, also from Codex. Benson in turn hired the first systems and support engineers: Steve Mastorilli, John Bullock, and Don Morrill. All from Codex. They were all very dedicated, hard-working, bright, customer-focused engineers. They learned how to install, use, and maintain our products in an amazingly brief period of time. For many of our early customers, they were the face of Wellfeet.

This steady stream of new hires from Codex gave birth to the phrase, “F’ing Codex Guy”. I will leave it to your imagination as to who coined that mildly disparaging term. Nonetheless, all of them were good-natured about the moniker, and later would proudly adopt the term as a badge of honor in describing themselves as “an original FCG”.