ServInt at 17: Thoughts on Loyalty

Today marked the 17th anniversary of when I founded ServInt.  17 is an interesting milestone.  Last year, at 16, I marveled at the fact that if the company I had created was a human, it would now be old enough to drive.  Now we’re forging further into “adulthood,” and I’m reflecting on what we’ve built and on the friends we’ve made along the way.

I had the unique opportunity to spend this special occasion in Hong Kong, celebrating with our friends and partners from PCCW Global.  Every year immediately following the Chinese New Year, PCCW hosts a large kickoff event in Hong Kong.  This year they invited us to join them as their guests.

When I started ServInt, the very first bandwidth provider I signed on was a company called CAIS, short for Capitol Area Internet Service.  In 2001 they were sold to a company called Ardent Communications, which sold off its networking assets to a company called BtN, or Beyond the Network Access, in 2002. Around 2006 BtN was folded into its parent company, PCCW Global – one of the world’s largest and most powerful telcos.  But we still basically have the same account team we started with when I started ServInt 17 years ago.  Long-term relationships like this in the Internet industry are rare to say the least! Read more

Thank You, Norman Edmund

Norman Edmund, 1916-2012

I woke up this morning to the news that Norman Edmund passed away last week at the ripe old age of 95.  To a man whose proudest possession is a 48-inch fresnel lens rescued from a discarded TV, this was like like learning Santa Claus had died.

That’s because Norman Edmund was the founder of Edmund Scientific — the company that sells the coolest science gadgets in the world.

Back in the 20th century, every boy or girl with a nerdy streak (like me) desperately yearned for something — check that:  nearly everything — in the Edmund Scientific catalog.  Edmund sold microscopes, telescopes, gyroscopes, rockets, prisms, lab sets, robot parts, crystal radio kits — even lasers!  The point is, it was all cool stuff, and it was all real.  These weren’t crappy toy versions of science gadgets; they were “lab quality,” and you could actually build, grow, fly, peer through, connect and learn things from them. Read more