BLAST was an acronym for Blocked Asynchronous Transmission, which was a sliding-window protocol that was exceedingly helpful for moving files around — especially well-suited for noisy phone lines.
Dan and Polly had created a remarkable software company.
Their little business suited our burgeoning distribution efforts perfectly. They shoveled out the new features, we sold their software all over Canada and the United States, and they helped us every way they could. This was the time of the nascent Internet, which meant we were also selling modems at an amazing clip. The tired cliché from the business literature of the day was about the Internet gold rush, in which we were the ones selling shovels and pans.
Then US Robotics purchased BLAST, and crushed it, and we were all taken for a bruising ride through the public markets. They were an up and coming manufacturer of industrial modems who had an eye on conquering the world. Stock market analysts told them that before they could go public, they needed to be both a hardware and a software vendor, and so they plucked BLAST out of Louisiana, moved it to Skokie, Illinois and positioned it as window dressing for what would become one of the most spectacular stock offerings in history.
Their clunky modems were replaced by a consumer product which they produced every minute and a half. They went on to see their names on the Fortune magazine list of wealthy individuals, and BLAST was forgotten like the child’s toy that breaks on Christmas morning.
We took the punishment from an install base of loyal customers who had been abandoned.
When we called US Robotics for bug fixes, they informed us that product had been discontinued. When we made a sale that was significant for us, they informed us they could no longer manufacture for that platform. And when the loyal BLAST users called for relief, all we could offer was consolation instead of new revisions.
I used to sit around the office after hours with our core staff, and we would frequently migrate toward a speculative conversation on “What would you do if you owned BLAST?”
“I’d pick up the phone when it rang,” said one.
“I’d call people back when they left messages,” said another.
“I think I’d develop a product for Windows,” said another.
I would leave these conversations, and return to my shack, where I would warm water on the woodstove for a shave, and rejoin the constant prattle of grants and fellowships and gardens that were largely imaginary in nature.
We all knew that BLAST was on its way to extinction, and we mourned the opportunity that we knew would be lost.
I distinctly remember the morning when I was walking to my Honda Accord to begin my usual massive commute, when I was overtaken by a moment of clarity. This was before I had started practicing with John, yet it was a study in manifestation.
It struck me in one moment that I actually could buy the company.
Which is what I did. I met my brothers in Skokie, we did the negotiations, US Robotics shuttled me around in a limousine, and within months we had a deal.
It was the eve of my first acquisition, and it was a heady time. I needed a place to locate the new company, and I needed staff to run it. Instead of inking some space in the go-go action of Research Triangle Park, I decided to gamble on putting the project in Pittsboro. It was a sleepy little farm town five miles from my house, and one of its many abandoned spaces was a bankrupt Mediterranean restaurant that was about the right size.
Industry pundits advised me that I would not be able to attract the necessary talent in a place like Pittsboro, and that I needed to locate closer to the action. I wondered about that. I thought that perhaps the woods of Chatham County was full of talent that was doing the same thing I was — which was hustling around the Park all day and returning to the “paradise” which we seldom had time to enjoy.
The only thing I knew about Pittsboro was that it was close. I turned to my friend Barbara Lorie for guidance and advice, and she took time off from the formation of her co-housing–community to help me out.
She pointed me to Sandy, the Zen priest who did renovation work, and he transformed the Mediterranean restaurant into office space. The space was barely ready when the deal closed and two eighteen-wheelers embarked from Skokie for Pittsboro.
The manager of the Town of Pittsboro did not know how to grant a business license to a software company. He was a creative and flexible man, and after enough conversation we concurred that it would probably be okay if we were permitted to open under the category of “Small Appliance Repair.”
When the trucks arrived they blocked traffic in front of the Post Office, and I went on a hiring spree. I had space which was almost completed — we left the Mediterranean palm trees painted on the wall — I had truckloads of computers and source code and boxes of product, and I had phones that were ringing with the fifteen-year-old vanity phone number that I had insisted be included with the deal.
What I needed was staff. My sales manager, Steve, left my side in RTP and took up with BLAST. As did Tami. As did my brother Mark, who parachuted in from Canada. But I needed more help than that. Barbara patiently directed me to all available talent.
There was Doug, who was writing a chemistry textbook. He abandoned his academic pursuits and joined BLAST to write documentation. After all, writing is writing. There was Sam, who was running a snack truck. Shipping is shipping, after all. Snacks, software — just ship it out on time.
Leon ran the furniture store around the corner. His passion was for elaborate wooden models of transport trucks and fire engines, and he was a remarkable craftsman. I’m not sure how healthy the furniture market in Pittsboro was at the time, but he had hand trucks, and he had a son, Brian, who had a strong back and a good attitude toward work. Brian unloaded our eighteen-wheelers — as his civic duty to help clear traffic congestion — and hired on to work in technical support. Brian worked with us for over a decade before realizing his dream of becoming one of the first professional fire fighters hired by Chatham County.
Barbara found Barbara, a local accountant, who was frustrated by her endeavors for a local CPA and who was delighted to become the Chief Financial Officer of BLAST.
We were in business over night. The phones were ringing, and we were shipping product all over the planet from the heart of downtown Pittsboro. We joked that we didn’t need to lock our doors at night, since we only possessed a million dollars worth of computer gear. Had we been selling farm equipment, we would have needed a fence.
BLAST was a truly global business. It had distributors on every continent, and product installed in almost every country on earth. Faxes rolled in with orders from far away places, and BLAST delivered.
I was still donning a coat and tie and vanishing into my monster commute to RTP and the family business, when Tami started going to work in her blue jeans. She did need to pick up her dry cleaning before her trips to Paris, or Milan, or Mexico City, but she found her Pittsboro days could be spent in her casual clothes.
“None of our customers come to Pittsboro,” she said. “They’ll never see us dressed this way.”
In no time the company lost its business attire, at which point I was instantly jealous.
I watched my colleagues moving on to more meaningful employment, where they could wear what they wanted to wear, and be who they wanted to be. With leftover palm trees on the wall, an expansive deck out back, and a ping-pong table in the basement, they went to work on shipping product.
Tami and I shared a humble farmhouse in the woods, which somehow got electricity and running water shortly after her arrival, but our conduit for communication was through Lisa, our travel agent.
Lisa would say, “You are going to be in Portland, and Tami is going to be in San Francisco for the weekend — would you like me to get you together?” Although Tami had left the family business in favor of small town software, she was still very much on the global stage.
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