Qtera Founder Joins VC Firm

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grateful photon 12/4/2012 | 9:17:51 PM

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Dr.Q 12/4/2012 | 9:17:50 PM

re: Qtera Founder Joins VC Firm Qtera answer:

They largely developed and delivered Powerpoint presentations.
At the time that Nortel bought Qtera, Qtera had done one (let's count that again for emphasis, ONE) customer demo. No product deliveries. No production. No booked ordered.

-Dr.Q

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shaggy 12/4/2012 | 9:17:50 PM

re: Qtera Founder Joins VC Firm can anyone explain what qtera developed and delivered to nortel? did any products actually come out? i don't care if it didn't sell-- nothing is selling. my admittedly uninformed impression of qtera was that it was another overhyped long-haul transport marketing blitz... anyone know the facts?
============================================

Qtera was a ULH transport platform. As I recal, it was capable of carrying 56 waves some 4000Km without regeneration. It had an asymetric channel plan, hence the 56 waves. I believe it skipped every third wave to avoid non-linearities.

Word on the street was that it was never fully sorted, and had a number of both optical and SW problems. I'm not certain if NT was aware of this gong into the deal, but I assume they were savvy enough to recognize the punch-list items needed to be completed to bring it to market.

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optical_maverick 12/4/2012 | 9:17:49 PM

re: Qtera Founder Joins VC Firm no product deliveries but they had an order from qwest in the hundreds of millions...then nt and csco started the bidding war to acq. qtera. csco dropped out at 2b. nt said they stole the company at 2.5b or whatever the final documented price was........qtera had about 20 million shares outstanding when they were acq....deals like that probably won't happen for a while.

mavi.

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grateful photon 12/4/2012 | 9:17:46 PM

re: Qtera Founder Joins VC Firm
thanks for the answers...

sorry, i don't count this guy as an industry luminary or shining example. many in our industry were grounded in reality about optical networking, and were also ethical enough not to try to dupe people with hype about "lasers" and "photons". i find it unfortunate that many of those that did engage in these shenanigans continue to recieve plaudits and credit as some visionary entrepreneurs. let the VC's have them...birds of a feather flock together.

grateful (and a little jaded)

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optical_maverick 12/4/2012 | 9:17:42 PM

re: Qtera Founder Joins VC Firm i don't think anybody was duped in this case. great technical team (qtera), concept was promising at that time, huge contract in there hand and at least 2 industry leaders did there due diligence and wanted to buy this company. mr. diner negoitated a great deal for the company and it's employee's. also, nt's stock jumped after the announcement of this acq......market cap went up 3+billion....

mavi.

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LightSeeking 12/4/2012 | 9:17:35 PM

re: Qtera Founder Joins VC Firm Optical Maverick,

Obviously you worked for Qtera, so you would know that the following is true. And the fact that NT's market cap went up by 3+ billion surely reflected that!

It is interesting that the announcement does not mention that Mr. Diner actually was already a VC with Mayfield!

Regards,

LS

______________________________

"i don't think anybody was duped in this case. great technical team (qtera), concept was promising at that time, huge contract in there hand and at least 2 industry leaders did there due diligence and wanted to buy this company. mr. diner negoitated a great deal for the company and it's employee's. also, nt's stock jumped after the announcement of this acq......market cap went up 3+billion...."

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lightmaster 12/4/2012 | 9:17:31 PM

re: Qtera Founder Joins VC Firm Nothing against Qtera specifically, but a huge contract from Qwest at the time (1999-2001) was not an indicator of product reality. All one needed at the time was to have a concept that made sense and stock options granted to the right individuals. Go down the laundry list of other companies that went public or were bought based on a Qwest deal that have since fizzled. Also, check the SEC filings for the IPOs or aquisitions to see which Qwest executives owned stock - it's incredibly educational.

That's not to say that Qtera didn't have anything (I personally don't know), but a Qwest deal was not a great measuring stick.

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bigdaddy 12/4/2012 | 9:17:28 PM

re: Qtera Founder Joins VC Firm what drove the Nortel purchase was likely more than just the Qwest deal. There were other trials in the works to get the buyers salivating like this one on GTE in 2000.

http://www.nortelnetworks.com/...

"We're extremely excited by this opportunity to work with GTE Internetworking to further validate our technology," said Fahri Diner, president and founder of Qtera. "Top-tier Internet companies like GTE Internetworking face tremendous pressure to continually expand network capacity while improving quality and containing costs. The unique ability of the Qtera platform to combine speed and distance - terabits over megameters - yields significant operational benefits to carriers like GTE Internetworking, including affordable, abundant bandwidth, survivability at the optical layer and rapid wavelength provisioning to ensure rapid response to customer demands for new high-capacity services. "

Shaggy had it right:

Word on the street was that it was never fully sorted, and had a number of both optical and SW problems. I'm not certain if NT was aware of this gong into the deal, but I assume they were savvy enough to recognize the punch-list items needed to be completed to bring it to market.

GP you asked the right question, but,
To say: they duped people with hype about "lasers" and "photons".
ignores some of the basics of optical networking. It is all about lasers and photons. Qtera lead the way for many Ultra long haul startups. They had the first chance to commercialize the dispersion managed quasi soliton solution.

You say: i find it unfortunate that many of those that did engage in these shenanigans continue to recieve plaudits and credit as some visionary entrepreneurs.

I find it completely appropriate that these people recieve credit as visionary entrepreneurs and end up with VC companies. The ideas and vision isn't what got them in trouble it was their lack of ability to execute and deliver

We still have at least one startup going down the same technical path as Qtera (you know who you are). They are in a none to envious position fighting to stay alive and do what Qtera could not. Is there a viable business case for ULH these days?

You tell me.

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optical_maverick 12/4/2012 | 9:17:28 PM

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