What was the purpose of starting Air Communications?
KS: In 1992 I met some people and came up with a business plan to start Air Communications as a wide area wireless device company. You could surf the web and recieve a fax with a little dial-up phone called an Air Communicator. It was bigger than our phones are today, but not too bad. We raised a total of $16 million, $5 million of which was in the first round. We had the first reliable cellular data phone you could have, and it included fax. I ran the company and also coded and designed software at night. We had good customers, and we got it to $750,000 a year in revenues. We were probably 10-15 years too early. That technology finally took off about four or five years ago. We had a great company and a great team, but I was a terrible CEO. SM: Why were you a bad CEO? KS: I didn’t have the experience. I chose my board members poorly. I didn’t have the strength, age or experience to control that. I chose very smart people, but if you are going to have type A personalities you better kno
