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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
jerry rawls
Turn Around Series: Jerry Rawls, Finisar (Part 10)
More on the strategic decisions and cost-cutting measures taken. SM: How did you do that? Did you change materials, did you negotiate your supply contracts? I mean 70% of material costs is a lot of material costs to shave. JR: The way we did it was we bought a laser fab in Fremont to make
Turn Around Series: Jerry Rawls, Finisar (Part 9)
Essential to the turnaround of Finisar were decisions which were much different than those being made by competitors, and different than prevailing popular trends. Ultimately, these decisions were also the right ones for Finisar’s survival. SM: And there were lots of process innovations along the way? JR: Exactly. So sharing all of that with a
Turn Around Series: Jerry Rawls, Finisar (Part 8)
After confronting the realities of the new market, difficult decisions needed to be made. Here the “engineer” in Jerry proves very helpful as he tackles the issue, at least in some ways, as an engineering problem. Cutting costs and establishing new operating procedures required far reaching changes. Also, I find it impressive that Jerry did
Turn Around Series: Jerry Rawls, Finisar (Part 7)
Dramatic changes in the market had forced major fiber optic giants like Lucent into tough decisions. The market also proved to be volitile and unpredictable. Nortel, in desperation, offered Finisar its optics business. SM: Nortel had interest in survival. JR: Yes. We spent two weeks in Ottawa trying to figure out how we could assume
Turn Around Series: Jerry Rawls, Finisar (Part 6)
A very interesting discussion of the dramatic times during the late 90’s and the early 2000 timeframe. Read on. SM: What were your sales pre-IPO? JR: I think in the ’98 period they were probably $30M. Our fiscal year 2000, which is when we went public, was $67M. In January of 1999 the IPO market
Turn Around Series: Jerry Rawls, Finisar (Part 5)
Among the many amazing feats Jerry has accomplished with Finisar, one of the most impressive is how the company was able to grow and develop without the assistance of outside funding. SM: All of this you were still doing without outside money; it was still a bootstrapped company? JR: Still a bootstrapped company. SM: Wow,
Turn Around Series: Jerry Rawls, Finisar (Part 4)
A key strategic victory for Finisar was facilitating the fiber channel stadard to utilize multimode fiber and shorter wavelengths. Here Jerry discusses how Finisar was able to do this, a feat which leading experts at the time said was impossible.
Turn Around Series: Jerry Rawls, Finisar (Part 3)
To support the company initially, Finisar relied on providing consulting services. It’s a very common way that companies bootstrap themselves. I have done it myself. SM: What kind of Consulting did you provide? Like System Integrators? JR: Well, actually, the first customer would be Raynet themselves, but we would have to get others soon enough.
