( ESNUG 262 Item 10 ) ------------------------------------------- [5/29/97]
Subject: Gordon Bell Defending Ambit & His Book On High Tech Ventures
> For expert guidance on this topic, on the flight home to Boston, I picked
> up and read a book written in 1991 titled "High Tech Ventures: The Guide
> For Entrepreneurial Success". It's a good book; very insightful ...
>
> "A strategy whose objective is to claim a niche from other niche
> players or from newly established, aggressive start-ups is almost
> certain to be fatal." (pg. 236) ...
>
> But to the book's author I must laughingly give a "Don't-Do-As-I-Do,
> Do-As-I-Say...Uh...Make-That-Don't-Do-As-I-Say,-Do-As-I-Do" Award.
> Why? Because that book was written by C. Gordon Bell, the Chairman of
> Board of Directors of Ambit!!!
From: Gordon Bell, Chairman of the Board of Ambit
Dear John,
I am glad you liked my book and the insight. I'm glad to have your view on
Ambit, too. Let me comment on whether I've acted according to how I would
advise others. Rest assured, arrogance and for established rules are not
present.
Recall I was on John Sanguenetti's board at Chronologic. It established
a successful company competing with Cadence for simulation. Chronlogic
was instrumental in keeping Verilog from going down the tubes. At the
first Verilog User's group, I persuaded the group to get their IEEE
standard license. This was non-trivial because IEEE didn't want a
competitor to their and DOD's language. I thought Verilog was an
intrinsically better language and that without it, we'd go into an abyss
design-wise with just VHDL. I wrote to a friend, Anita Jones,
undersecretary of DOD's DDR&E and ask her to rescind the order to allow
Verilog. She wouldn't, and I was happy to tell her that Verilog now has
the majority of design seats.
Chronologic was successful because it FOLLOWED the dominant language
standard but yet built a product that significantly increased user's
productivity. Cadence needed a competitor in order to make them better.
Recall I headed engineering at Digital for a number of years and tried
to manage products to be competitive both internally and externally.
As for Ambit, you're right, I'm Chairman of their board. I was an
initial investor and have been advisor to the company, and helped
recruit employees:
* Unlike the company I cited in the book that created the rule,
you'll find no coffee cups or tee-shirts lying around and it's unclear
that anyone knows very much about the company e.g. size, product
characteristics, users, beta sites (if any), founding date, founders,
funders because the team has been working on the product... not hyping
it. So note, their was NO telegraphing of intentions. Recently, my
friends at Ambit simply ask a few of the folks in the design community
they respect to have dinner and to talk about design.
* Although the company cited in the book created a superior product,
the problem of converting user programs to use vectors and the
porting of software was virtually insurmountable. What is important is
being able to utilize standards so that users need not be retrained and
can utilize their base of libraries etc.. In the case in the book, a
different programming style was required even though the company
followed the "Fortran" standard.
* Finally, it is essential to have new functionality for any
product if it is going to follow a standard and create its market.
Recall I said "A niche is often the only way a fledgling company can
develop a product that will return high margins and hence, be
profitable enough to fuel growth". I believe Ambit can fill a very
large niche.
* Recall all the advice we have followed: we have not announced a
product (so what's the big deal about having dinner with a few
designers?), knowing the customer (and communicating with them), focus
groups, living with standards, creating significant value added
functionality, etc. Time will tell whether what we've created is useful
and designers want it.
* There are lots more things that the company stands for that I feel
are really significant, but I won't bore you with all those details
until the team decides to announce it.
So far it's nice to see that users are interested in products that use,
extend, and open standards. This is the flaw that the established CAD
companies seem to have missed when they've tried to build various products.
- Gordon Bell
Chairman of the Board of Ambit
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