Have An Invention Idea? | Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard, known as the “father of the cable modem.” + How the “Father of the Cable Modem” Bootstrapped His Way to a $59 Million Exit + How 73-hour Work Sprints Shaped His Culture

Audio Transcription

Transcribed with Cockatoo

(Speaker 5)
Okay, I got an idea for a phone app.

(Speaker 12)
Okay, I’m listening.

(Speaker 5)
It’s called iCondiment, and you select mustard.

(Speaker 12)
I don’t know, I’m not feeling it.

(Speaker 5)
What about an app where people send in ideas for apps, and we charge 99 cents, and we become billionaires. What about an iBuckle? It just goes right on the front of your belt, and it buckles.

(Speaker 10)
What happens when you need to use your phone?

(Speaker 5)
Well, then you just undo your belt, and then you got your phone.

(Speaker 12)
Then your pants fall down.

(Speaker 5)
Well, you know, yeah. Okay.

(Speaker 15)
Instagramma.

(Speaker 5)
Instagram, but only for grandmas. Twitter, but you can only use five characters. You could say, hello.

(Speaker 17)
How about this?

(Speaker 5)
Eye taste.

(Speaker 12)
Seriously?

(Speaker 13)
Mm.

(Speaker 12)
Phones are disgusting.

(Speaker 5)
Got an ear taste to it.

(Speaker 12)
This is a horrible idea.

(Speaker 5)
Eyeglasses. The only app you’ll ever see. You turn the app on, and you put the phone right in front of your face, and then the phone sees for you.

(Speaker 12)
I don’t understand.

(Speaker 16)
OK, let me help you.

(Speaker 1)
So take off these old things.

(Speaker 15)
OK.

(Speaker 14)
You need your prescription?

(Speaker 12)
No.

(Speaker 13)
Boom.

(Speaker 12)
This is stupid, and it hurts.

(Speaker 11)
Let me see.

(Speaker 5)
Hey, you look good in these.

(Speaker 3)
Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show, but this show does. In a world filled with endless opportunities, why would two men who have built 13 multi -million dollar businesses altruistically invest five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use? Because they believe in you, and they have a lot of time on their hands. This started from the bottom, Now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time Show, starring the former U . S.

(Speaker 3)
Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body, Dr. Robert Zilner. Two men, eight kids, co -created by two different women, 13 multi -million dollar businesses.

(Speaker 2)
Folks, on today’s show, we’re interviewing the man who invented this sound. That sound, folks, remember that sound when you’d go on the internet? You’d go on the internet, you’re trying to go on the internet, and it would, this guy, he’s the inventor, if I’m correct here, of the cable modem, and I believe the man who invented perhaps the worst noise in the history of the world. Sir, welcome on to the Thrived Time Show.

(Speaker 10)
How are you?

(Speaker 1)
Good, Clay. Thank you so much for giving me an opportunity to talk with you.

(Speaker 2)
Now, there’s somebody out there who’s right now watching. They’re going, how do I pronounce his name? Can you give us, can you settle the most controversial issue on today’s show? What is the correct pronunciation of your name so we don’t all get it wrong?

(Speaker 1)
Rouzbeh Yassinifard.

(Speaker 2)
OK. Now, so I got to ask you here, when you invented this cable modem, where were you? Why were you doing this? Walk us through how you invented the cable modem.

(Speaker 1)
Thanks, Clay. So it’s a little bit longer story, but I tried to make it short for you in the best possible way. If you go back in history, and if today is 1980s, the way the computers at home had a possibility to connect to other computers was using a thing called phone modem. For that, you had to dial a number, you hear beeps and burps, and the modem gets connected, and the very lowest speed of the 9600 or 28 ,800, you could connect point -to -point your computers to another computer. That’s how the methodology was in 80s.

(Speaker 1)
So with that in the background, I came to work for a company called General Electric, GE. We learn in GE how to build TVs, camera, VCRs, and using a wire known as a coax cable. Shortly after that, I took another job with another company called Localeo Networking Company, Proteon, and they were doing data communication over twisted pair. The question I asked myself, why do I need two physical separate cables? One as a twisted pair, go to a place called Workplace, and I connect computers together, or another cables which called Coax, and those entertainment, and we do it at home. So the home was entertainment center receiving Coax cable that brings the contents like HBO, Showtime, CNN, and so on.

(Speaker 1)
And then you go to a workplace, log into a local, you’re networking with your computers and working together. So the question came in, could we do voice data and video over the same cable. And the only cable available, which was covered the entire United States at the time, was a coax, residential coax cable that brings a normal cable TV program. So that was 87. And my vision at that time was, wow, that’s great. We got a cable that already goes to every home.

(Speaker 1)
We like to have connectivity of computers from the home. So what’s better than that? The magical box that will connect the computer to cable TV called Cable Modem and we started in 1986. Me and my team were creating the first prototype. The first prototype was half a size of refrigerator, cost $18 ,000, weighed about 80 pounds, used about 300 watts of power. It was really bulky.

(Speaker 1)
That’s not the type of a product that you can put in people’s living room or basement. So within nine years, we were able to reduce the technology to the size and affordability that became to be less than a six pound and cost less than $299 and solve the problem. Now, for the first time, you could have high speed connectivity over long distance using residential cable TV. And that’s the discussion and the goals of the cable modem that brought the broadband services to every home that you and I are occupying today and many others who are listening to our show.

(Speaker 2)
I’m just fascinated by inventors and how inventors invent. You’ve written this book here called The Accidental Network, how a small company sparked a global broadband transformation. When you’ve had the kind of success that you’ve had, what sparked you to write this book? Why not just go off into the sunset and enjoy a life of luxury? Why did you decide to write this book?

(Speaker 1)
Well, we actually enjoy the life of luxury by giving our technology free to the world to use, opposite of any entrepreneurs that create technology and become to be billionaires. And once you are billionaires, you are well known and everybody wants to talk to you. Everybody wants to hear your story. And you are somebody. In a capitalist society, you have to have that type of a status to be able to communicate and be able to be known. What we did opposite of that, we created the technology, we made it available to industry at no royalty for perpetuality to be used.

(Speaker 1)
And as a result, we were happy instead of being billionaire, seeing billions of people around the world. get connected. And during the COVID era, we saw how valuable the broadband connectivity was for economical point of view, educational point of view, healthcare, and e -commerce. Why did we write the book? The broadband story and journey that I started in 1987 by 1996 became to be a really matter of the community services that everybody loved to have it where nine years before that nobody even know why do I want to put data over cable infrastructure. So from there we use the same standard.

(Speaker 1)
Standards that we had created we give that to industry, known as a cable lab to create the standardization global standardization of that. And now the same technology that we created to do 10 megabits at that time over six megahertz, which was a standard cable. Now I can do as much as 10 gigabits connectivity. So to me, that’s enjoyment. Enjoyment that same infrastructure has been utilized to do the high speed connectivity for the people from home. And I get a great satisfaction on that.

(Speaker 1)
And what was missing is, how did that story started? The story started where MSOs, cable operators, didn’t know why they need data over cable. Why would anybody want to pay for that? And what services would they use? And venture capitalists didn’t trust the cable industry would ever be a reliable data distribution. And that accidental part comes from the side that was just our vision, which really gave a life to this technology.

(Speaker 1)
And if you look at the financial statement of the Comcast, which is a public company, by year 2022, they were making more money out of providing high -speed data to the people’s home than actually the video services. In fact, the data of voice and video all goes over the same infrastructure of the data, the cable modem that we created. So to me, that’s the enjoyment, that’s fun, and that story needed to be told after 37 years, so hence the access. Network, which brings the story out and let the entrepreneurs, investors, and the community knows how the broadband came to the home near them.

(Speaker 2)
How old were you when you invented this technology?

(Speaker 1)
The vision came to me when I was about 25 years old. And by the time I look around, I was 57 years old. And this technology now is a mass billions being used around the world. I’ve been babysitting that technology from that age until when I was 57 years old.

(Speaker 2)
So when you said the vision came to you, can you walk us through what that means? A lot of people watching this don’t get visions. They don’t get epiphanies. They don’t receive ideas for inventions or concepts. When you say you had a vision, what does that look like?

(Speaker 1)
That’s a fair question. Remember, I told you when I was working on General Electric, everything we designed and developed was over coax cable TV. And that cable TV has a strong and large bandwidth for a lot of signal goes through. For example, if you look at your TV system back in 1990, you have 56 channels. Each channel is six megahertz. Each channel brings different contents for you together.

(Speaker 1)
So that life taught me how you can transfer video information over a cable TV. And I mentioned to you that I work for a company called Prodion and they do data networking and high -speed data was what we said pair and they were putting 10 megabits of the data over that piece of wire. The vision that came to me which your question goes through directly was this. If there’s two separate wires, each one does a job, can we have one wire and put both signals goes through it. So by that time, there was really two type of networks in the world. The phone modems network, which is a long distance with very low speed, or the short distance with a high speed.

(Speaker 1)
speed. Nobody had long distance and a high speed connectivity. That’s the vision. That’s what came to me and that’s what I pursue.

(Speaker 2)
Now, my understanding is that you built this company and bootstrapped your way into a $59 million exit. So I mean, when people hear the word bootstrapped, I think of a bunch of dudes working in a very tight work environment with low overhead, scrapping together any possible thing they can do to save money, to reduce expenses, and to increase revenue. How would you describe what the bootstrap process was like to build your brand?

(Speaker 1)
Well, it looks like you were in my land city company as we were making that the way you explained it. So, you know, in 1987, a time frame when we had this vision and we wanted to build a product of this nature, when we went to the cable operator and told him, listen, the same residential cable could be used for high speed data. The top three question was, A, why would consumer at home needs data? What for? Because at that time that was unknown. Secondly, I am making revenue out of every channel on my coax.

(Speaker 1)
HBO, Showtime, CNN, Sport Channel. Why would I want to give a channel for free? And a third, this technology doesn’t even exist. How can we even trust you to build a product that kind of does that? That was on the cable operator side, on the venture side. The venture side were considering cable industry as a sewer system, that a good thing goes in it and a bad thing comes out of it.

(Speaker 1)
Why would I want to invest in a cable industry, which by that time had never proven that be able to be innovators? So knowing that, so the challenge is, how do you start? We did some consulting for some of the companies around, and we used that money to develop our prototype. And then we were able to attract a company called Digital Equipment Corporation, Digital Equipment Corporation had a technology called Ethernet, and Ethernet was going over so much distance, but we went to them and we told them, listen, We can get that technology that you have done to go over 200 miles or entire city. That’s the word land.

(Speaker 1)
City comes from clay. Land means local area network being over citywide through residential cable. After 230 plus meeting with the Digital Government Corporation, various executives, we were able to convince them to be a strategic partners. As a strategic partner, they had a chance to own our technology or even own our company if they wanted to. but we were able to get some funding from them and some expertise from Digital Government Corporation, thanks to Ken Olson, their founders, and we were able to use that to develop the next generation of our product, which we did. And by that time, we were able to sell some of our product to the universities, to the hospitals, to the schools, to the government centers, and that money came back to our operation to be able to feed to our next generation of development that we built the personal cable model.

(Speaker 1)
So it was earned to grow, a little bit of consulting, a little bit of strategic funding from Digital Equipment Corporation and the early revenue from our own product in a way that by third quarter of the 1996, we actually had $40 million booking in our product coming across. But we knew we were a small company, a small company of the 13 employees plus seven contract seven advisors and our cable industry was telling us that we need to be a lot bigger company and we need to be more manufacturing oriented. So at that time, the best way to save our technology and make it de facto standard was be able to sell the company to a bigger networking company, which Bay Network acquired us.

(Speaker 2)
Now, when researching for today’s one of the things I found, and correct me if I’m wrong, is that you would do 73 hour work sprints. en route to building this company. 73 -hour work sprint. I don’t know what that is, but it sounds terrifying. A 73 -hour work sprint.

(Speaker 2)
Tell me how a 73 -hour work sprint and Persian food fueled your startup success. Tell us about this, sir.

(Speaker 1)
The entrepreneurship has a passion and momentum. So I’ll share with you one instance, for example. We were working on integrated circuit because, as I told you, our box was big and bulky, half a side of refrigerator. We even had a choice to reduce the size or reinvent that technology that will be future -proof. So we decided to reinvent it to be future -proof as such. We had to develop an integrated circuit.

(Speaker 1)
And our integrated circuit was really big. We had to develop simulation technology and so on to be able to do that. When that chip arrived in order for us to test it, we could not wait. We were like a mother who is trying to give a birth to a baby. And we were in that pain. So we had to be awake.

(Speaker 1)
We had to work around the clock just to make sure the silicon that we just received has life in it. and can pass the packet, can pass the data, can communicate. So that energy, that momentum, that timing, and that excitement of getting our first silicons to work was really a way that was a good example of how the 73 hours come. Parallel to that, a normal day without silicon arriving was an 18, 19, 20 hours day with my staff. And what will happen in the first shift we will try to do all the good thing goes and the second shift we try to run some of the tests and evaluation. To that point, my mom and dad were kind enough to bring Persian food to the office.

(Speaker 1)
and the staff that was there would be fed. This is well before Silicon Valley existed, well before Silicon Valley mentality was out there, that you feed your employee, you treat your employee like a family, which we did. And that Persian food was a way that we sat around the table and not also have food that we have energy to work, but also more importantly, we were talking about some of the difficulties of that day that we had or good news we had, and that will help our communication. That was kind of our meetings, a practical meeting. And on top of all that, the way my team was working, because sometimes they had to go home and they had their own family, they had their own children, they had to do that, so they would come back later in the afternoon with some of the children, and we had gummy bears or pistachio or M &M that kids love to have Some of them, so their dad or mother would say, we’re gonna go get some M &M, and the guys will come back to the office, do some extra work or run another set of a test, that when they come back next day, tests are ready. So we had a great chemistry between our team, we had a great team, we had a great passion, and we knew, talking with the customer, that everybody loved our technology and the cable model that we were building.

(Speaker 1)
So those were the reason and the momentum that we had those long hours in order to get the job done as fast as we could.

(Speaker 2)
In your book, I’m going to pull up your book again here. You know, I love reading books about entrepreneurs who’ve turned their dreams into reality. And again, folks, I’ll put a link on the show notes so people can see the book as well. But if you go on Amazon, you look up the book, it’s called The Accidental Network. how a small company sparked a global broadband transformation. I want to ask you, in the book, do you get into the impact that this technology has made on everything?

(Speaker 2)
Because the technology you’ve created has made an impact on everything. I can’t think of anything that hasn’t been impacted by the technology you created.

(Speaker 9)
Do you get

(Speaker 2)
into that in your book?

(Speaker 1)
Yeah, so the book talks about, I had an original book written in 2003 called Planet Broadband. By 2003, Planet Broadband, at that time, listed 83 basic services and operations that can happen, and nobody wanted to believe that high -speed data will be able to enable these. These were like e -commerce, telehealth, security system, and so on and so forth. In this book, we specifically go, actually, talk about all the values, all the benefits that Broadbent has brought to the GDPs of the nation. As you know, better than anyone else, that e -commerce today, the GDP of our country all drives and runs on an infrastructure, this digital highway infrastructure. The credit goes to many, many peoples in the country and the world who innovated around this.

(Speaker 1)
But without the broadband pipe, your Netflix, which back in 2010 was sitting at zero customer, would not be having 230 million people today to be surfing the technology. Your Amazon services that works right now would not have the capability to see all those videos. The YouTube stuff would have not worked out. So there’s a good chapter in the book that covers all that area. But what’s more important is this. It took a whole village to really build the broadband infrastructure.

(Speaker 1)
took a whole industry to create this type of services that goes around it. And today’s viewer that you have, perhaps don’t even know what cable modem is, don’t even know what broadband is, or no need for them to understand what that is. To them, the world is a streaming. Everything is streamed. Now, if you go fast forward one more couple years, we all hear about artificial intelligence, AI this, AI that. Well, guess what?

(Speaker 1)
There’s a lot of shortage of the energy and the power to get these server farms working. There’s a lot of shortage of resources. to be able to train this AI model. This broadband infrastructure is fundamental by getting the AI infrastructure in a place that majority of the people be able to utilize and have these server farms in a different. and diverse area with the valuations of the energy that can provide them. So the book addresses all those items.

(Speaker 1)
It’s not just about innovation that we did to build the cable modem, but also talks about the economical impact of it.

(Speaker 2)
Why did you decide not to sell this technology? It would seem logical that when you invented this technology or created it, it would make sense to sell the technology, have the big billionaire exit. Why did you decide not to sell the technology?

(Speaker 1)
I’m very happy that I didn’t make that decision. I didn’t make that decision for a number of the reasons. It’s really important sometimes for entrepreneurs. That’s why I always tell every entrepreneur, think big. We need to think big and we need to solve the humanity problems. We need to solve quality of life.

(Speaker 1)
I come from Middle East. I understand the impact of the oil to the societies and how does the utilization of that, fuel impacted the world. So telecommuting at the time, which was the buzzword everybody was used, it was very important to my heart. It was very important to me as a person. So by delegating and providing a technology for free, we were enabling the majority of the people in the world be connected and utilize this as a way of communication. And that was more important to me than the zeros in the bank.

(Speaker 1)
Number two, because we have developed the technology, because it was working better than anybody else, because it was already tested in the government facilities, the school, university, was so many years ahead of everybody else. So that could have speeded up the deployment of the broadband, again, If we didn’t have a broadband deployed in a massive way, think about how in year 2020 COVID would have impacted. the peoples and the families and so on. So that’s the second reason. And a third reason, you know, the life is not just about the money. Life about is having peace with yourself and energizing and doing good for the humanity.

(Speaker 1)
And that was more important to us. And as a result, we are very glad to see our technology be a foundation of today’s DOCSIS standard that is doing all the good things that it’s supposed to do. And that’s not a decision I will ever regret.

(Speaker 2)
It’s just a wild time to be alive for all of us. But for you, having been the guy that created a lot of this technology, it’s got to be. What’s been the most eye -opening or mind -blowing result that you’ve seen as a result of your technology, man? What’s been the innovation where you look at it and go, I can’t believe that has come to pass?

(Speaker 1)
We had about 90 % of the market shares of our technology that was distributed. I have to tell you a couple of examples. Tokyo in Japan, and we had to travel to Toyota City, which is hundreds of miles away from Tokyo, and that’s a rice field. Everything over there around it is rice field, until you get to the actual Toyota City, where the cars are being manufactured and so on. There was an older lady that was using the cable modem, and she had known about me, and she was saying, oh, Dr. Yasini, you are the one who did the cable modem. To you, it’s really, important milestone sometimes where the common people using your technology and see the benefit of it.

(Speaker 1)
So, that’s really rewarding. Parallel to that, Indiana placed a school district where we’re giving them the first set of technology. The teacher thought we’re going to eliminate their job, where that was not the goal. The goal was connecting the schools, connecting the headquarters, and all to talk together. So the first one we were able to convince to make it work was the janitor, because the janitor had to get up in the morning and go to turn 45 to 60 different schools’ air conditioning or heaters on and off, depending on the season.

(Speaker 2)
And he wanted to use this technology that it doesn’t have to get up at three o ‘clock until eight o ‘clock and all this stuff going on. And one day the school’s principal was late to send the data for end of the year to the capital. They asked us if they could use our technology to do that. So of course, that’s what this technology was invented for, file transfer. And that was really neat to know. One other example was in MIT professors that we went over this place, they were using a dial -up and we said, hey, let me give you the cable modem, see what it is. He said, fine, I’m gonna go get my coffee and maybe take a shower and come back to see if the file is transferred. Before we got up from his chair, he saw the file is already transferred and saw the results. So the impact to the humanity and the people believing how fast the connection was really fulfilling for us and was very, a great way to see that. Where did you grow up? Like, where was home for you growing up? Well, I really grew up in a sense in a company called Persia, Iran. And I left that country in 1977. I came to the United States, went to a school in West Virginia, WVU in Morgantown, West Virginia. I got my electrical degree from there. And then I went to work with Joel Electric in Portsmouth, Virginia. Wow. Wow. And I got to ask you, it’s my final question for you. You are doing so many interviews with so many great podcasters, and I want to make sure that I give you an opportunity to share what’s on your heart. So before we do that, I encourage everybody out there, check out the book, The Accidental Network, How a Small Company Sparked a Global Broadband Transformation. Again, The Accidental Network, How a Small Company sparked a global broadband transformation. What is the question that you maybe wish I would have asked, or what’s the message you want to communicate to our listeners out there that are eagerly taking notes and will more than likely check out your book?

(Speaker 1)
Well, Clay, if someone who’s listening to your podcast is entrepreneur and wants to start a company, my suggestion to them is think big, try to solve a problem that impact humanity, and focus on the solution and the product that does that, not the money you’re going to make. If the person that’s listening to your podcast at this time is a user of this technology, I want them to understand that they have opportunity for first time in their generation to use this technology, which bring the wealth of knowledge from the world to their living room and dining rooms and the bedroom set, to use that to be able to make constructive services that will help and assist the humanity for the years to come. And if you are an AI -driven person that everybody talks about, Think about it. We have to build broadband infrastructures to connect billions of people around the world. The AI needs a similar infrastructure, needs the power source, needs the connectivity at a very, very high speed, and it needs to have the trainability of this. So this broadband is your friend.

(Speaker 1)
This broadband is your toolbox, and this broadband is the one that connects the several farms together and create the whole new set of evolution and revolution of the technology. So if you are listening to play a podcast, the takeaway here is by thinking big, thinking about solving planet Earth’s problem, you will be in a better shape and form than my generation was, and I wish them the best of luck.

(Speaker 2)
Thank you so much for carving out time. I know time is your most important asset, your most valuable asset. I know you’re a busy guy. Again, thank you so much for joining us today. I really have learned a lot and I encourage everyone to check out your new book and sir, hope you have a great rest of your day.

(Speaker 1)
Thanks, Clay. Have a good day.

(Speaker 2)
Take care.

(Speaker 8)
Bye -bye.

(Speaker 3)
But Clay Clark, man, he is one character.

(Speaker 4)
That’s a good word for character.

(Speaker 6)
Yeah, that is it.

(Speaker 1)
Good, driven, smart, and I’ve never met a guy who was so hyper all the time. He’s doing so much good. And then I met his mother and she just says, she just lets him be Clay Clark. I mean, so he’s endorsed by his mother and he’s doing magnificent work. So it was great meeting you out there and all the people that he surrounds himself with. His Clay Clark starts his days at five o ‘clock in the morning.

(Speaker 4)
Oh, it’s incredible. Yeah. He’s, he’s like, he’s, he’s a machine.

(Speaker 1)
He’s a machine.

(Speaker 6)
But his, you know, I got, I have problems with my company starting at nine o ‘clock.

(Speaker 1)
Yes. Hundreds of people showing up at 5 a . m.

(Speaker 7)
in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

(Speaker 6)
Man, he’s a leader of a leader. He’s a fantastic young man. No, he is. He is.

Transcribed with Cockatoo