Kris Safarova  01:25

Welcome to the Strategy Skills podcast. I’m your host, Kris Safarova, and this episode is sponsored by StrategyTraining.com. You can download the Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies, which is a gift we prepared for you at firmsconsulting.com/overallapproach. You can also get McKinsey and BCG-Resume example, which is a resume that get offers from both of those firms, and you can download it for free at firmsconsulting.com/resumePDF, and they have a brand new gift for you today, access to an episode from How to Build a Consulting Practice, and you can get it at firmsconsulting.com/build. And today we have with us Dr. Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard, Amy winner, founder of LANcity and author of The Accidental Network, and he is known as the father of the cable modem and leads innovation through YAS Foundation. Rouzbeh, welcome.

Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard  02:32

Thank you for giving me opportunity to talk with you and your audience, Kris.

Kris Safarova  02:35

Well, this is my honor to introduce you to our listeners. Your story is incredible. What you have done for all of us is incredible, and thank you for all you have done. So when you arrived in the US with $750 in family savings and no safety net, what gave you the belief that you could build something big here?

Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard  02:58

Well, you know, let me go back into history. And by 1987 I had two set of background experience. One was on General Electric building, TVs, VCR cameras and all the other stuff that goes over the coax. And then I had a company working in a company named protean, where I learned about data networking. The idea, in my mind was, why don’t we do the data and a video and a voice all over one cable instead of two cable? And at that time, nobody believed a could be done. B is necessary. Because why would the people want to be connected from their home and the computers to other computers? Makes no sense. So my mission started by searching and finding the vehicles to be able to do that. It took me nine years to actually be able to bring my vision that voice, data and video can be travel over the coax cable and make every American homes, or for that matter, every global home, to be a part of a broadband infrastructure. But through that, I had to a, build a product that works and reliable. B, convince the cable industry and cable operators that this is a huge revenue for them, and a C show practically, that this stuff could be a scale in a millions of the people. We’ll make the story short for you by year 2022, if you look now, the cable industry and cable operators are making more money for developing and delivering internet and data over their coax than they actually do for the video. So this was a short story of the success of transforming a cable industry from being an entertainment and the video operation to a high speed data, video and the voice, all digitally being transferred over the same coaxial cable that was covering the entire United States. So that was the mission. That was the goal. We started in 1987 by 1996 we had brought the eight. $1,000 price of a device to below $295 and then we in charge, helping the industry to make that global standard, which known as a DOCSIS as such. This global initiative has taken over and our significant home around US and abroad that using the cable industry to provide broadband services and be connected.

Kris Safarova  05:23

Please tell us a little more. I know it is such an in depth, incredible story, and everything is in the book. But for our listeners, just to get a little bit more understanding of your journey, of how you made it happen,

Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard  05:35

That’s an excellent question. Most entrepreneur believe strongly on a vision that they have. The question comes to the execution. My execution had number of the barriers in some cases, actually, I refer to 500 of them. But let’s talk about the big one. First, financial barriers. No bankers, no venture capitalists, no cable industry. The players wanted to believe that you can put high speed data over the infrastructure. So that was the first barrier. The second barrier was a technology to be able to bring the size of the product and cost of product to the consumer level. The third was innovation and integrations, to be able to do reliable modulation technology and the data transfer that can work under all hostile environments. So if you grab those three, what are called major barriers, then you’ll face a mountain that you cannot really climb. And is everyone that I talked with was telling me that, why would you want to do something that a, nobody needs. B, nobody finance and A, C, technically, we cannot get there, but we knew it was just matter of a time and matter of execution and matter of delivering the pieces. So because I was so early with my thought process, and because my idea was so big in the beginning, it took us a good nine years to be able to passionately work with a small group of the people, as the book captures. This is the story of the 13 employees and the seven consultant total of the 20 people, where we got, not also the technology to work, but also we brought the cable industry to a level that believed they can deliver high speed data services, and, more importantly, in a manner that they adopted it to make it a global standard. In fact, the way we deal with that was, we used to go to the cable industry and the consumers that we had we say, we’re going to leave you with the puppies and play with the puppies, which was the cable model for four weeks. Then we’re going to come and pick him up. Every time we went to pick him up, nobody wanted to give him away, because they were how useful and how productive the product was to them and and I have a remember a meeting that I had with bunch of venture capitalists where I estimated there will be a million plus user by 1999 that will be connected to the broadband. And I remember my venture guys told me that Bruce may be like you. We understand your passion. We understand you can get this thing done. But you know nothing about how hard it is to get to a million user by 1999 this was early 1990 1989 timeframe. Well, guess what? They were right, and I was wrong. By end of 1999 we end up to 2 million customer instead of one so and the product was working flawlessly. This was all done because we had a good group of the working engineers, good group of the people that believe in my vision, and we were able to execute against some of the big companies, which were our competitors. Our competitor were companies like Motorola, HP, Intel, and we were a small company up to 20 with the self funding, and they get the job done. So we feel very proud, and that was a reason we wanted to put that stories in the book, because a typical entrepreneur goes to venture capitalist, gets the money and the support and get the job done. In this specific case, we didn’t have any venture capitalists who support us. They were self funded. But more importantly, when we got the technology, they completed and working reliably, we were able actually to provide that technology for free to the cable industry as an open standard that they could utilize it and then bring it to the more like a global level. So it was not also developing the technology on ourselves, but also providing it with royalty free to the industry that they can utilize it and scale it higher up to the more users and more cities and more towns and so on.

Kris Safarova  09:31

And then eventually you sold the company for 60 million. Talk us through that period of your life.

Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard  09:37

That’s a very tough decision for every entrepreneur to decide, because your startup company is your baby, you like to hold it, you like to grow it, and you like to make it to be more well known. But we were against the tough, big corporation and competitors at the time, so we had about 90% of the market share. Years between 1987 to 1996 our technology was flawless and was doing a very excellent job. Most my customers were telling me, rouge baby, like your technology, your cable modem, does very good job, but you’re a small company, you will not be able to scale to the expectation we have. The CEO of the bay network at the time, was an excellent friend of mine, and we were able to communicate with Him to show him the potential of the market, show him the value of our product, and showing what our customers are asking us so putting our customers needs first and putting our customers desire about utilizing our technology at a higher level of a scale will be, would be the best thing for us we could do. And so the merger of our company to the bay network was the right thing to do for everybody, and also rewarded my employees and my staff that was working so hard to be able to get some financial reward from that deal as well. So at that time, actually, I used to run my company in a open platform, talk with my employees, talk with my managers, and most of them taught, is better to sell the company. And while I had that founding feeling, let’s keep the company and let’s grow it more, it really made sense the company to be sold. And that result was very successful, because as a result of US selling the government to Bay networks, shortly after, Bain network was purchased by Nortel, and the scalability of our technology became to be very visible worldwide.

Kris Safarova  11:43

Of course, when you look back on this entire journey of building this company, what do you feel you should have done differently? Or maybe you’re not sure if you should have done something differently, but the doubts are there.

Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard  11:58

Well, you know, entrepreneur sacrifice significant part of his or her personal life to build an innovation and build a company around it. Today’s companies are at the different levels, different chemistry and just let’s pick up. For example, the AI Artificial Intelligence, the artificial intelligence would go nowhere. Or most companies in the Silicon Valley will go nowhere if the broadband connection was not working at high speed. Remember, we brought the speed of the connectivity through cable modem almost 1000 times faster in about 30 years. Is because of that speed that Silicon Valley companies have taken off with the social media networking, you have two 30 million people on the Netflix that using the technology to be able to get their entertainment video. You saw that during the covid area, everybody was using their computer at home to work. So all those are huge benefit that the broadband has brought up. But what that does for entrepreneur, in our time frame, we sacrifice the personal life, because you put seven by 24 your efforts in there, you sacrifice proving the technology and innovation that took nine years to really bring it to the maturity levels. And I wouldn’t change anything because I was passionate that broadband communication and high speed data will help telecommuting. As a result, we use less oil to burn in our car. Therefore the planet Earth will be cleaner and more susceptible to more people to live in it. And as a result, was a really a nice way to be able to do that. Would I be able to do exactly the same thing we did an 87 to 96 right now, absolutely not. One is the age reason. The other one is at those era. We took so many risks, so many challenges, and we had nothing to lose, in a sense, and we had a very open communication methodology to talk with our team. So I wouldn’t do anything different, but I don’t know if there is enough passion and energy left an entrepreneur after you go through all that hard work and all that effort to be able to repeat over and over and over again.

Kris Safarova  14:12

I think you have done more than enough for one lifetime for so you don’t need to worry about that.

Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard  14:18

Nicely put, yeah, I agree with that.

Kris Safarova  14:21

Looking back, what did you learn about yourself during those hardest years?

Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard  14:26

So as a founder, you have multiple role one is to be visionary and make sure that your vision is achievable. So I had to connect my consumers and my customers to my employees, that they both feel what we are developing is exactly what’s needed. So making that bridge is one job that entrepreneur or a person like me had to have. The second job was making sure there is enough self funding and there’s enough financing that can keep. The momentum going. The third piece is to make sure that we have market the technology and branded the technology that is simple enough for everybody understand what this value is. Because I remember clearly back in 1991 1992 the people asking, Why would anybody wants to connect their computer? They wouldn’t even know what the World Wide Web was at the time, and so you have to overcome that. Then on top of all that, you have to put your accounting hats on. You have to put your HR hats on. You have to put your operation hats on, because you simply just cannot afford to really get all these people that you need to get the job done, because you put all your energy on design and development and the marketing of the technology. So as a founder and a CEO, I had to carry all those balls. So I would always tell the people that my first shift is to get the vision and attack, technical evaluation and implementation done. A second shift is the marketing efforts and branding efforts and being able to communicate. And a third shift is all the operational issue that goes around on that I remember, for example, we were using a specific memory chips for our product, and we had worked with a very major Fortune, 100 company at the time, to get our job done. And we were right before production that that major Fortune, 100 company says, I’m sorry, rich baby, just decided this continue this new product, and we’re not going to build that flash memory. I said, Oh my god, this is really going to be impactful to our production. We have to have it so, finding their way around it and being able to immediately work with the other vendors and get a substitute that is exactly compatible to our design, was a monumental task, or developing our integrated circuits in order what we used to call shrink the baby, you know, shrink the size of the product. Our product used to be something about 80 pound of the product. They’re using significant power, or bring them all that to less than the seven pound. It really requires a lot of development and integration of the silicon that we have to do. So all that comes together is really, at the time was magical, yet at the time was really driven by passion and hard belief that the hard work is going to pay off. And all we had to do, just get layer of layer of the onion be peeled. And as a result, we were able to accomplish what most major competitors. Of us still had the PowerPoint, but we actually had a product that was doing the talking.

Kris Safarova  17:33

And what is very telling about people like you who do big things is you were like that. When you were working for someone else, you were exactly like that, and you were not only working like that for yourself.

Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard  17:45

Yeah, so is that energy level, and is a passion that drives you when you work for yourself, and when you work with the hard group of the people who believe in your vision, and there is no politics in the company, the only goal is get a technology done, put it in front of the customer, make it operational and scale it up. That was our mission. So it was really rewarding those area of our development and working between 1987 to 1996 that that focus and that energy was really the fuel we needed to go and when you work for someone else in another company, their visions and the missions are not as clear as it was for us, because I knew every time I would talk in the in the front of the cable operators, or in front of the schools, or in front of the universities or in front of the corporate America say, Listen, land city means take your local your networking. City wide, local area, networking and 10 megabits can go 30 miles, 200 miles, and as far as city and the country the people says, Oh, that never can be done. Show me. And when you put the product in front of them that shows that function, you make believers out of everyone. So thanks to the World Wide Web taking visibility by 1994 thanks for cable industry believing in the vision that we had. Thanks for our product doing everything that is supposed to do. All the stars were lining up for us and and, you know, our revenue, I give you that by in 1991 was at $0 you know, by 1996 we were making $40 million every quarters as a result of the technology that we had developed and we brought into the market. So is it, is that drive, and is that believing in your vision and the team that is you surround around you that clearly has a focus and their objective basically is to make something work that can be done, but it takes time and Lance it is a good example of what we were able to. Competition. This book, The Accidental network, really takes a good cut at this whole story. How did the cable modem happen? How did broadband took off, and how a small group of the people were able to really change huge impact to our telecommuting and healthcare and our education and a government connection, where everybody in the world now is connected to the broadband and provides their daily services and so on so forth.

Kris Safarova  20:31

If a young founder asked you today, what does it really take? What would you say?

Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard  20:36

Well, you know, what it takes is, first, have a big idea. Second, believe in your idea is achievable, and surround yourself with the people who can be better than you are and smarter than you are and with just as passion as you have. And thirdly, make sure there is a consumer or customer who believes in that vision. If you got those three ingredient then you really got a good farmland to start developing. I can tell you, you look at today’s startup, some of the numbers is mind boggling. The companies are getting seed round financing of 2 billion to $4 billion at valuation of a 12 billion those numbers are unimaginable back in time of the 1980 678, timeframe, or even early 1990s those were exit criteria for a company to make that type of money. So it’s not just really money. I believe we are little bit in a wrong chapters by valuing certain industries, specifically AI or specifically robotic, with those numbers, because I think the money is not going to make those success. It’s going to make some of this company fail. But you need more than that is a proven prototype and a product that actually does the talking. And I think we are short on that. Give you an example in the sense of the energy that it takes, because for some of these AI company to be successful, they need gigawatts of the tech power, just the power to turn on their computers to get the AI modeling to work. It takes 10 plus years to build a nuclear reactionary that give you one gigawatt of the power, and so to get the 910, 1112, gigawatts power they need, we have about 10 plus years away for those power sources be made if they go nuclear, or if they go other sources might take less or more not having the power to turn these computers on. A lot of people’s so excited. Well, by by that AI chip, by this AI chip, we’re going to make these servers working. But if there’s no power, how you’re going to make them work, how you’re going to train them, and so on so forth. So there’s a little bit of misunderstanding on some of this aspect, and I’m hoping that as time goes on, the entrepreneur to be able to balance the reality with the product that does the talking and the customer who can actually believe you can accomplish all that.

Kris Safarova  23:17

That is very true, Not to step away too early from your incredible story, you described soybean in the Honda in your garage, what happened that day? If you could share it with our listeners, and what changed because of this situation?

Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard  23:32

So that was 1987 timeframe, and and I was working for this high speed data company that I went to, the founder of the company, which was from MIT, and I told him, Listen, I have this idea that I want to share with you, and I think it will work very well you doing our company does data networking, and the way we do data networking using twisted pair, and with the twisted pair, we are connecting the computers together within a building. I told him, I have an idea that we can connect computers over the city and over the entire country if we want to then, instead of just in a building, his view was that if somebody wanted to solve that problem was already solved number one. And then he made a comment that, well, you know, you better go back to your office and do what you are hired to do. And he also made a funny comment about me being a foreign nurse. So combining nation of those three elements together really gave me a feeling that he was rejecting the idea without even understanding what I’m trying to tell and what I’m trying to show what I shared with him was that, hey, there is a huge market, a lot bigger market than just connecting a building or corporation together. If you can connect the entire city and the people within the city so that company could have been the founders and orientations of the entire broad. An industry which is a multi billion dollar, if not trillion dollar market. So I was very upset. Man, I left his office and right on my Honda Civics at the times and drove back to my apartment that I had rented and in the garage I, you know, I couldn’t stop crying about it, because I was really disappointed that he is a founder by himself. He was very well known and respected in MIT. Why wouldn’t he give me the opportunity to explain at least to him, and he will tell me later, is that, well, you know, maybe we do that two years from now, or three years from now, not immediately. Instead of saying, that’s a stupid idea, nobody wants to do that if they wanted to be done. It has all done. So I quit the next day, and that was probably the best thing I could have done. And he came after me. He said, Well, no, no, we really need you. I said, remember, you told me I’m no good, and my idea is no good. Why would you want to hire somebody who’s no good? So that was the start of my personal road trips for myself, to build my vision by myself instead of trying to, you know, have it another company to adopt.

Kris Safarova  26:08

This is such an incredible example of not betraying yourself.

Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard  26:12

Yeah, good way of putting it. Thank you.

Kris Safarova  26:15

Why do you think people could not see it well?

Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard  26:19

You know, of course, the big ideas you look at Elon Musk, for example. Elon Musk, earlier went to Russia, tried to buy a rocket from them, and the people were laughing at him. Why don’t you want to buy the rocket? And when he was coming back from that trip, he started analyzing, so, hey, what is all the key element of the rocket actually looks like? And then he said, Well, I’m going to restart and rebuild a new, fresh rocket from the beginning and and take all that extra expenses, all that extra overhead, all that bureaucracy out of it. He was successful Netflix the same way. Nobody believed in a streaming video, but they said, Hey, this will make sense, so we’re going to take a whole fresh look at this and and be able to come up with the technology to be able to that. Of course, they needed broadband. When the broadband was available helped them arrive. So they went from zero customer to two, 30 million customer. In in our view, was that this was a big idea. It required cable industry to adopt a two way system. It requires a cable modem technology that can work reliably, and it requires a pricing that will be able to be purchased by consumer and consumer barrier to afford it. So I could see those three elements in New England. We have a story because we have a lot of granite in these states of the New England. We always say sculptures can not chip enough the granite to look like a beautiful statue that everybody can look to the museum. But we could see the statue. We just have to take time to chisel the granite until the sculpture comes out of it here was exactly the same way. I knew I could solve the cost problem, I knew I could solve the technology problem, and I know that I could bring the cable industry to believe their two way solutions works very well for them. So it was just matter of the time to be able to implement all that together so and I had nothing to lose. You know, what is the penalty of me failing? My plan of failing is that I won’t have a job. And that’s not really bad things. You know, you can always go look for another job. So, because of the big idea impact that entrepreneur bringing like Elon Musk did, like the Mr. Harry, Mr. Reid did for the Netflix like we had in the case for our broadband. You need to have those big move to be done, and I just happen to be lucky at the right time, in the right place, to see right solution, and then surround myself by people smarter than myself and be able to get the job done. So that’s really what I call home run, you know, in a sense of a success we had as a team.

Kris Safarova  29:09

Definitely. And I doubt that people were smarter than you. They just have different expertise than you, but you’re obviously very smart and kind person. Do you feel that being an immigrant gave you a certain age that you otherwise would not have?

Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard  29:26

Well, this is a double edged sword, right? In some cases, being an immigrant is good because the people kind of sometimes don’t respect the immigrants. Don’t count on them, they don’t think they’re going to get something done. On the other hand, being been immigrants, and coming to this beautiful country with has a lot of opportunity and lot of what I call area of the growth, you will see that an immigrant can work very hard, seven by 24 and prove itself himself or. Ourselves to the rest of the community that we can make a positive impact to the new country we have adopted. So from working hard and proving ourselves, I think that’s a great motivation, and the fact that people might ignore you and not count on you that you can deliver that also forces you to want to prove that you are right. But I was lucky. I had a lot of great mentors in my career, in general, electric and the protean that I work and I learned a lot from these mentors to be patient and to work on a team, and and I believe in the capabilities that I have learned through my West Virginia University, when I went to school there in Morgantown and through the job. So because I was lucky, because I have great mentors, because I learned to be patient, because I was so surrounded by good people, and because the vision that I had seen for connecting voice, data, video or same cable made real sense to me. The stars were lined up for my success, all I had to do to implement and execute, and as I mentioned, we had certain barriers for that. But I was lucky that at that time frame, I happened to be right a spot, and being an immigrant probably was a good energy for me because of proving myself to my new country that things can be done the right way. So so I can see the result right now, and looking back, I’m very happy to see my contribution, because it’s not just to the business. What we did with the cable modem, we helped the humanity. Look at the telehealth, look at how much improvement we got to telehealth. Post covid, we are the broadband services that a lot of people have better quality of life by being at home and remotely, being able to manage and monitor and see the test results. Look at the quality of education. Look at how you and I do our everyday job from home. Look at how we deal with our government and work through information that’s available, and thanks to the most of the Silicon Valley companies and and the Boston company in Austin, Texas, and the others, you’ll see so many tools now available that our children and age 432, have access to programming and playing with the iPads and and the tablets. So these are very good you look at the farmers that now using the technology connected with each other for irrigations of their plants and the trees to use better quality and less waters to be able to do that. So I think our broadband evolution not also was a financial success that impacted the GDP of the country and GDP of the world, but also helped the quality of the life and also to help the humanity to get to this next level of what I call comfort zone, that that we are now more as a information age than being an industrial age.

Kris Safarova  33:10

Without a doubt. Let’s talk a little about AI, a little more, because I know we already touched on it. Where is AI? Do you think it creates real value right now and where it is just noise?

Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard  33:21

Well, so in a medical field, if we go back there, I think is a excellent core pilots slash mentor for the doctors, because you can now use AI Technology and look at the MRI or X ray or CT scan a lot more in details and predicts a lot meta visibility in certain of these results. So I think that’s an excellent area. You can look at the consulting actually, and a field of the technical analysis and a market analysis. There is a lot faster information that can be gathered through AI than the old fashioned I just heard a company like Gartner, who is very popular in this type of thing. They lost 50% of their stock value in the last two months simply because of what AI can do more, faster and cheaper for them. So you look at the law the same thing we used to have lawyers look at the days and the weeks and the months to find a case study of a legal issue now that’s available in the seconds to them. So I think in the area of what I call medicals, legal fields, consulting fields, education, AI can be good companions to help and move those a long way in the area that, quote, unquote, you get AI tomorrow in the robotics that robots does up. 100% of what the individual does, and also think just like ours, and be able to function as a human being, I think it’d be about maybe 10 years away before that truly can work if, for example, if you look at autonomous driving, you know, we’ve been talking since 2014 autonomous driving. Level five is coming, and car gonna drive themselves? Well, it’s 2025. You still don’t have that 20 of those car driving themselves yet. So it’s about 11 years. Takes a little longer. And I think that’s the same thing is true in case of AI and the other elements of the AI, which is dangerous if the AI is only trained by two or three rich companies in the world, and with no guideline and no quote, unquote, regulatory things around it, it would be very not productive for the other 8 billion peoples who might not be part of those companies. So there is an element of the AI that needs to be better understood for before it replaced a human being, as in being projected to be able to do that. The other part of AI that I mentioned to you is the infrastructure to get the AI to the level that everybody’s talking because of their limitation and shortage of the power is significant. And if anybody thinks these massive silicon that people are developing and these data centers can work overnight and get the job done, I think this is not quite right yet. You have heard in last few months certain Silicon Valley companies making their own power generations in their own campus because they need that, or they need to move to the states like West Virginia or Wyoming or other state that is full of energy to put the data centers there and then through the broadband and high speed connection and be able to reconnect all those things together. So the AI is the good things in the sense of what we think it can accomplish. In fact, maybe the word AI is new, but AI functionality in a smaller scale has been around. We even had it in cable modem back in 1996 where I could look at the entire city and predict based on amount of the packets being dropped, or amount of noise on the line, what part of the town or city is going to lose their services. We didn’t quite call it AI, but the same concept, same type of a phenomenon. We call it network management at that time. So there are good bags, there are conservative backs, and there is what I call infrastructure bags that needs to fall together. But right now there is a frenzy. Anybody use the word AI wants to be billionaires and come the venture capitalists can wait, throw billions and billions in some of those, but they’re really lacking their operational experience, and they’re lacking what I call a reality call. Because remember the.com era, we had the big bust in the.com Why? Because was oversold. I think the PR and marketing of AI is being oversold today, and that needs to somebody brings the temperature down and pass it through what we call a reality test to make sure everything is is exactly what it needs to be done. I heard from a company yesterday that they had to revise their operation plan, and they were saying by year 2028 they need 100 $50 billion dollars more than what they had anticipated. I mean, that’s more than a money that half the countries in Africa use an annual basis for their running their entire country. So we just had to be a little bit more realistic.

Kris Safarova  38:55

For our listeners who don’t have tech background and they feel uneasy about how fast AI is developing, and they are concerned about staying relevant and being able to continue provide for their family, for themselves, being able to contribute. What do you think will happen in terms of the development of AI in the next few years? What is realistic, in your opinion?

Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard  39:19

I would suggest for those who are not as technical and want to really ride the AI waves to ask themselves, what customer problem is that AI solving, and what is the contribution of that AI solution to the workforce And to our economy? Because everybody can follow that technology can grow and bring money or extend the business. So is it growing a business? Is it solving a problem? That’s one set of questions to ask. The other second of question is that, is that technology scalable at the global level or at the core? Country level, or is it just a noise in the sense of a look, we accomplish something? And the third piece of that, I think, is to make sure that is that AI models and the technology that they think, is it affordable by average person? What I mean by that, you know, we all have certain income. We all have certain you know, bills to pay is, can we as a consumer, afford to pay for that? AI tool and those key practical parameters is, will be very helpful, not just to the people who don’t have technical background and want to get AI, but also to venture capitalists who say, Oh, we got to solve this problem no matter what the price is. You must look at an operation cost, and you must look at the scalability and the value of the dollars that requires to make that product of AI to work at a really, what I call global scale and, and none of those questions are answered right now. Everybody is is a vapor where, what I call everybody is happy with marketing and the PRS and and image office and, and that’s okay, because we saw that in.com era. We have seen that in industrial age before, back in 1930 as well. But, um, hopefully we get some operational people added to this section of the AI and some real questions are being in developed. To answer that, I will put a parallel for that, for the cable modem. You know, in the cable modem, back in 1990 and 1991 1992 we were to a small town called a store in Massachusett, and we had an actual cable company that was covering that called Neshoba Valley cable, and we brought our technology, and it took us almost six months to really get the first actual cable model really works over the cable plan really works to the people’s home, residential really be operated by the cable operators. Integrity. That should have been a one day job, but because was the first time ever works being done, and because of the first time connecting our residential cable, first time going to the people home, it took six months to really before you had the the performance that we had expected to see. So there’s always a lack of real implementation versus laboratory implementation, and that’s something I’m always very careful. Another example on that is today, the people claim we can put 10 gigabits over a cable infrastructure. That’s great. That’s fantastic. I love to hear that. And some people says we can’t even push 14 gigabits. That’s even better. And there are some standards that says we want to put 3.2 terabyte. I said that’s even great, but show me over long distance of a 200 miles that you can actually have reliable technology to work, then you’ll see the number is more like around four or two gigabytes, and it’s not those theoretical number. So there is a difference between theoretical and practical. And unfortunately, we don’t have enough people over there, enough practical experience in the venture market, and then some of these AI company to ask those level of a question and make those relevant to everything. But I’m very optimistic. Love innovation. I love the big ideas. I encourage everybody to keep pushing forward, but have some real, realistic yardstick to measure the real progress.

Kris Safarova  43:52

And building on this. What do you think leaders should be doing right now to stay relevant in terms of skills development, especially people without tech background, how do they stay relevant, so that they’re not going to get replaced?

Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard  44:05

So there is a number of the white papers you can see, and articles by everybody that says, Oh, we don’t need anybody to write code anymore, because AI can help you to develop code. And that’s true. AI can help you to write basic code and a simple code and a lot of what I’ll call a standard module, but we still need the people who program AI chips to be able to learn the computers to be able to program itself. We need mathematicians to write a logarithms that is required to be able to make some of these complex problem broken down. You know, mathematics is a foundations of the solving. We did it in cable modem. Use math and physics and and then the same things, a law of physics. You know, we’re trying to put a lot. Lot of complexity inside integrated circuits, which is great, but you need to make sure that those type of law of physics can be applied. So we need mathematician we need peoples with the field of the physics. We need the peoples who understand logarithms that defines and breaks complex problem to a smaller problem that it’s an AI can solve, and at the same time, we need the power generations to create the things needed. But then, don’t forget you need infrastructure to infrastructure. You need electrician, you need the plumbers. You need the carpenters. We cannot forget those peoples, because without those guys, I hear there is a major shortage for them. Some of these high quality companies even build facilities that they need. So we need to be able to retrain our task force to adopt to those, for example, you hear lately we’re going to bring the manufacturing back to America. All for that, I’ve been in the manufacturing for 40 plus years of my life. But the manufacturing we did in 19 8019, 92,000, has nothing similar to the manufacturing of the 2030 the 2030 manufacturing is robotic. Is it programming, and is a very time related sensitive logarithm base, you know. So having the peoples to train and build those robots that does a specific task in the best possible way requires new generations of the scientists to be able to work on that one we also don’t. Should not forget the impact that AI might bring to the family and social life because isolation of the family, if, if I’m only interfacing with the computers and a computer to computers and other community, and not peoples and the friends around me, is going to create a social isolation. So we need to be really careful to make sure that we don’t break the community and the family and the society that requires for us to act as a human and be a human and walk like a human and talk like a human, because they still need that in order to be able to nourish this AI industry to get to this next level.

Kris Safarova  47:31

And what emerging tech should knowledge workers pay attention to now, including AI, but beyond AI as well, anything else you want to mention?

Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard  47:41

The thing that is missing so far, and people have not addressed it and give it enough credit, is the quantum technology, quantum computing. Quantum Computing has significant roles to play with us. Quantum Computing is one of those boosters that we need in order to make our space technology that works better, as well as our AI to works better. So that’s one area which needs a better TLC, if you will. And attention. And I encourage anybody and everybody to peel the onion couple layers on the quantum computing, quantum technology, that it goes the next level in top of that, which I think is also just as important for our society, is network management, and then network operations. You know, in order to be able to run a city automatically, in order to be able to run water company that provides water to our community in order to make sure we have clean water, in order to make sure the drinking water is safe and sound for community of the town that has 2 million, 4 million, 8 million people on it, we Need to have what we call a process and procedures of the industrial engineer to really manage the parameters that is required to be monitored. And some of those need to be done in real time now, because of the pollutions that we have, because of the, you know, the density of the countries and the towns that are growing, and we need to put attention on those analysis and those quantitative to runs our cities and towns and and what people need, in the case of the drinking waters for instance, for example, or clean air for example. And I will see a time that entire planet Earth will have multiple sensors using with the low power sensors that can measure these parameters and report it to a central place where, just like you get the weather forecast, and just like you get a rain forecast, you can actually get air pollution or. Water pollution forecast for the given community. So we need to put all that together. And also, you know, if autonomous driving takes off, if Aoi takes off, we need to update the local government and the federal government with, how do you run a city that is everything now is automated, and run the computers by the computers so that education needs to fall a place as well.

Kris Safarova  50:25

Last question, since we are running out of time, what underpriced markets or overlooked trends do you think are today’s broadband moment?

Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard  50:36

Really good question that requires a little bit of research before I can answer that for you, and I have not thought about it, so probably not qualified at this point to answer that, because my especially with my book that we just have finished three years to write down how we did the broadband and the challenges we have gone I haven’t really thought about that. So I hate to answer a question that I don’t have a good knowledge about it at this point. So my apology to you, Kris.

Kris Safarova  51:08

About that, no problem at all. Thank you so much for everything you shared with us that was such an incredible conversation. Anything else you want to share about the book, about your work, or anything else at all?

Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard  51:19

You know, the book is really written for three type of what are called audiences. One is, if you want to be entrepreneur and everything is against you to be an entrepreneur, read my book, it tells you that there are other way to succeed and skin the cat. Then if the venture capitalist turned you off, there’s other alternative for growing on that. So that’s from an entrepreneur. Secondly, if you’re in a college and and and you like to invent something, I encourage you, because you’re an excellent educational system this country has to offer. Think big. Try to solve a big problem. Don’t necessarily go after something small and try to think of, how can I make money by creating a company. Think about, what can I do? So again, the book will help you to see how you could mastermind big ideas. Thirdly, if you want to know what are the challenges that can turn you off in your personal life as well as your business life, as well as you’re running a corporation today, there are some good lessons in the book that tells you that how I overcome those elements and how you’re able to solve those and maneuvers around them and move forward again, again. Look at the broadbands like a river. You know, the waters in the river keeps going down the hills and past every stone, and every stone that is front of the water, the water finds a way to go around that stone and keeps going toward the ocean. And the books capture that models very well, in the sense, in the end of the day, the book really has list of the heroes that work with me, 300 plus of them, which is mentioned, and I just got a nice memo from a person that I have never met before that says, Wow, you mentioned Mr. XY in your book. XY was my best friend, and I never knew his contribution to the broadband until I read your book, and he was delighted that I had given credit to such a person and and most people don’t. But I said, Well, this book is all about that here unknown heroes, because broadband has been about 38 years old, that nobody really had given a credit. We in America invented it. We in America build it. We in America, scale it up in America made it financially reliable and affordable, and we give it to the rest of the world, just like our apple pie in the country that we have created and shared with the rest of the world. So I think there’s a great American story that we are brought on in the book, and I’d like anybody give it a chance and look at that American story in this book.

Kris Safarova  53:59

And you are certainly an unknown hero. And thank you so much for everything you have done for us. Our guest today was Dr. Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard, Amy winner, founder of LANcity, and author of The Accidental Network. He’s known as the father of the cable modem and beats innovation through the YAS Foundation. And this episode is sponsored by StrategyTraining.com. Download the Overall Approach Used in Well-Managed Strategy Studies. It’s a gift we prepared for you at firmsconsulting.com/overallapproach. You can also get McKinsey and BCG-Winning resume, which is an example of a resume that got offers from both of those firms, and you can get it at firmsconsulting.com/resumePDF and the new gift today for the first time, I’m sharing it with you. Access to the first episode of How to Build a Consulting Practice, and you can get it at firmsconsulting.com/build. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I’m looking forward to connect with you all next time.