Buffett said, “There was a guy, Pete Kiewit in Omaha, who used to say he looked for three things in hiring people: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And he said if the person did not have the first one, the latter two would kill him. Because if they don’t have integrity, you want them dumb and lazy.”
And Cerent’s sales team [4] found success in supporting distance-learning networks too.
[1] According to George Gilder in his book Telecosm (2000): “[Bernie] Ebbers bought Wiltel in August 1994 and by 1996, he was the king of fiber. In the next two years he brought MFS and Brooks Fiber under the Worldcom name. This brought him UUNet, one of the best ISPs. Worldcom was perfectly positioned to shift revenues from the telcos (something that MCI had given him) onto the Internet through Worldcom’s IP, fax, data, and voice offerings.”
[2] “When it comes to connecting schools over networks,” wrote Denise Harrison in 2010 for The Journal, “Iowa's initiative was one of the earliest and most comprehensive . . . Things truly took off in mid-1989, though, when a state bill was passed and signed providing for the construction of a shared, statewide telecommunications network.” She adds, “Construction on Parts I and II of the Network began in late 1990. This consisted of installing one fiber optic endpoint in each of the 99 counties, an endpoint at each of the three state universities, another at Iowa Public Television, and one on the state capitol complex, for a total of 104 endpoints.” In 1994, Iowa Communications Network or ICN for short came into being and was augmented soon after with “full-motion video delivery for public and private school districts. By 1997,” Harrison adds, “the 500th full-motion video classroom was connected to the ICN, followed by the 600th classroom the very next year.” These were the years Fiberlane came into being and then Cerent emerged from the Fiberlane splinter, respectively, to more effectively accommodate the growing (transport) bandwidth needs of systems such as ICN going forward.
[3] When I connected with Promod Haque of Norwest, again in July 2017, he offered, “Since 2013 and the successful Cerent acquisition, we’ve invested in a number of innovative companies. We’re so proud to work with such talented entrepreneurs. This includes a number of AI-focused companies (CognitiveScale and Gong) that are making great strides in the category." Promod added, "We are also very active in the healthcare IT space and look forward to working with these entrepreneurs to make advancements that greatly improve clinical outcomes. Look to Qventus, Silk Road Medical, Science Exchange, and CareCloud for important developments in the health space.”
[4] Distance learning networks were one of the opportunities that Cerent’s Eric Clelland targeted with his Independent Telephone-centric sales team during the late 1990s.