The InterWise Story - Chapter 3
It was one of the largest board rooms I have ever seen. Bill Gates's suite of offices was at the end of the hall, complete with a plethora of secretaries and a tall guard standing by. From the other side of the table sat a rather large contingent of technology and business operators from Microsoft, headed by a gentleman with a business card that read "Anoop Gupta - Assitant to Bill."
It was Friday afternoon, the second day of what felt like a prolonged cross-examination. Not that it came as a surprise. Microsoft, by then a big customer of Interwise, announced that they are about to acquire a company in our field and invited us up to Redmond. To learn more…
The slide decks we prepared were inundated with purple text. The engineers knew these marked the line beyond which no more data is to be shared. The Microsoft team quickly understood the purpose of the purple color and even made fun of it, a fact that did not discourage them from continuing to poke relentlessly.
The Interwise tech team led by brilliant, talented engineers was buckling under these relentless, good-mannered inquiries, especially after some comradery was established. Engineers are inherently good people with a strong inner drive to answer when asked even if purple is splashed all over the place. I had to stop these dynamics and move the conversation to business tracks.
I took a bio break and went up the hall where there was no shortage of secretaries. I gave the lady that struck me as the most senior one a piece of paper with a list of the Interwise engineers and asked her to order a taxi for each so they could make their flight back home. I rejoined the discussions inside, and the Microsoft secretaries came in every few minutes, plucking my engineers out of the room one by one announcing that a taxi was awaiting downstairs airport bound.
It was true that they all had flights back to Tel Aviv, but it was also true that they were all scheduled only for the following morning... When the first one looked at me puzzled when his taxi was announced, I wished him a safe flight with such a big smile that the next one, when called, just said goodbye and left no questions asked.
It was 6 pm that Friday afternoon when at least from the Interwise side only business members of the team were left In the giant board room. The technical interrogation was over. Anoop called for a short break and brought in something for everyone to eat. It was a big trey of Bananaa's (I shit you not).
So there we were. Ensconced in this vast board room with at least ten Microsoft executives and techies, most of them dressed in shorts and Flip-flops, munching bananas like a bunch of starved monkeys. It was the perfect moment to ask Anoop (assistant to Bill) something I wanted to ask Microsoft for a long time now. “What exactly were you thinking when you put out NetMeeting as an inherent (free) part of the Windows operating system?”.
At the time, Meetings online were the call of the hour (fifteen years before zoom showed up), but it was clear that no funds could be raised to build it because Microsoft was offering it free as part of their operating system. In fact, that was the reason Interwise started as eLearning and live classrooms and not live meetings.
Anoop gave me a big smile, leaned forward, and looked to the end of the table where a rather young guy was seated quietly for the last two days. "what were we thinking with NetMeeting?" Anoop asked with a grin. At the end of the table, the guy jumped to his feet and did not look one bit amused. "NetMeeting was not a product, just a show of technology," he proclaimed and dropped back in his chair. I was left with the impression that this scene was not plaid out for the first time here and that there was more to it than just a show of technology...
We carried out our business exchange until late that evening and left Redmond awaiting Microsof’s decision. A week later, on a bright Monday morning, I got a call from Zig Serafin, head of M&A for Microsoft. Zig told me that he was calling to let me know in person before the news hits the wire that they will NOT be acquiring Interwise. I asked if I should call Subrah CEO of Webex my prime competitor to congratulate him, and he said no. They decided to acquire Placeware, a Unix-based Xerox park spinoff. I could not get it for the life of me, but it made no difference.
As I hung up, the news began to sink in. This was not a just courtesy call informing me that something good would not happen. Microsoft will now be a competitor, the kind that gives away for free what we do as our business. In fact, it dawned on me that Interwise was just issued a death sentence, and indeed it did not take long for the board of directors to demand a fire sale.
Life was about to get even more interesting.
Chapter 4 - Francois the French fighter pilot
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