Today, the network that we use to connect computers with a central service works at 10 megabit or 100 megabits, which is low-speed stuff. Nine months down the road, there will be a 10-gigabit standard that is a thousand times faster than what we have today. I work with corporations that are trying to make that happen so that I can figure out how to integrate that new technology into our own product. But a big part of the compensation is stock, especially at a start-up. Sometimes people will take less pay for the right equity position.
Size is also important.
This is my fifth start-up. At all of these firms, I was in engineering. So, I've been in the industry for 17 years. I received a bachelor's degree in engineering from Northeastern University and a master's degree in engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. One day I saw an article about Sycamore's IPO and I decided to look at the names of trees, thinking that that would be a good way to find a name for the company.