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HOT TOPICS
- The Accelerator Conundrum
- The Startup Velocity Question
- Platform as a Service
- Man and Superman
- Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)
- The Future: End of Capitalism
- Capitalism 2.0
Bob Hagerty
Pioneering Video Conferencing: Polycom CEO Bob Hagerty (Part 13)
SM: What is your philosophy of recruiting leadership? Is it domain expertise, leadership skills, both? BH: Yes, yes and yes! It is all of those things. It is a cultural fit. It is an excitement. There are not many maintenance jobs given the speed that we are growing at. We are looking for people with
Pioneering Video Conferencing: Polycom CEO Bob Hagerty (Part 12)
SM: In terms of where you are today, and from a business / financial point of view, what is your strategy? BH: For us, the near term is focused on scaling. The opportunity is big. Every time I say that, I end up doing an acquisition. We clearly do them and we have them in
Pioneering Video Conferencing: Polycom CEO Bob Hagerty (Part 11)
SM: If some entrepreneur came up with an application which uses video conference as a delivery mechanism, would you invest in them? BH: Generally speaking, no we do not. I am not going to say never. However, we would rather partner. We have our R&D in India. We have a small team, and it has
Pioneering Video Conferencing: Polycom CEO Bob Hagerty (Part 10)
SM: How would that work? The doctor’s office has to buy the Polycom suite? BH: The best example I have seen is Escorts Hospital in India. There, the population is not served well in rural areas. They have outreach clinics and they have our device in a regional center. People will come into the regional
Pioneering Video Conferencing: Polycom CEO Bob Hagerty (Part 9)
SM: Yes, i remember, even in the 2001 timeframe the Polycom equipment was not that great. The pictures were horrible often. BH: If you run it on IP, it runs pretty darn good. However, 90% of the installations were on ISDN at that time. The technology shift to IP changes it all. Plus, we have
Pioneering Video Conferencing: Polycom CEO Bob Hagerty (Part 8)
SM: What happened after 9/11? I remember, I bought the Polycom stock and it did very well for me. BH: We were ramping very, very fast through 1999 and 2000. Cumulative average growth rates in the 30’s and 40’s. After 9/11 it exploded even more for us, but for really horrible reasons. Then the financial
Pioneering Video Conferencing: Polycom CEO Bob Hagerty (Part 7)
SM: When you mapped out the acquisitions, were companies like PlaceWare and WebEx on your radar? BH: We considered it. SM: Was it too expensive? BH: No, we did buy one actually. We bought MeetYou. It did not resonate with our company. It did not fit our go to market, although we were technically in
Pioneering Video Conferencing: Polycom CEO Bob Hagerty (Part 6)
SM: What was your response to the customer demands? We created a suite of solutions. We bought Accord Networks which we felt was the best multipoint conferencing network. Then we had the endpoints in the multipoint. From within we built an IT application called GMS, which allowed us to run all of the equipment. We
