The Afterlife of FORE Systems

Once upon a time (in 1994), four guys from Carnegie Mellon University started a little technology company called FORE Systems. The little company soon grew, acquiring other companies and attracting many talented workers. Pretty soon FORE Systems was a Pittsburgh start-up success story. Then one day in 1999, a British company that would come to be known as Marconi bought FORE for a pretty penny. And then, six years later, another company named Ericsson bought the parts of Marconi that used to be FORE. The end.

Hardly.

Multiplier Effect

The story of FORE Systems is far from over. Although the company itself is no longer around, it’s still a major player in the Pittsburgh tech landscape. Just look at its legacy: a variety of new start-ups, budding and seasoned entrepreneurs, skilled talent, philanthropists, investors, and mentors.

Call it the multipler effect. Terri Glueck of Innovation Works, the region’s largest investor in seed-stage companies, says, “The experience that FORE alumni bring to the existing entrepreneurial fabric of the community is extensive, because they lived through all that rapid growth and they acquisitioned. So they can help to pass that along to the next generation of entrepreneurs. They bring a lot of value to the community that ripples far beyond the businesses they start. It’s a whole web of advisors, investors, and mentors that is a real benefit for new entrepreneurs in our region.”

In its early days, FORE received investment money from the Ben Franklin Technology Center (the precursor to Innovation Works). Since then, Innovation Works has invested in other companies started by FORE alumni, including TalkShoe and Landslide.

Talent Show

One of the lasting benefits of FORE Systems is the recruitment – and retention – of smart, talented employees.

Dave Nelsen says that he loved his job at AT&T in New Jersey before FORE recruited him in 1994. “I thought I was going to work there for my entire career. And even the day I walked out the door I thought I was going to go back,” he says. “But after I’d been at FORE Systems for three or four weeks, I knew I was never going to work for corporate America ever again.” Nelsen had caught start-up fever. Even then, he says, he didn’t expect to stay in the Pittsburgh region. “I never thought I was going to stay here more than the four years it took me to vest my options at FORE. But here I am 13 years later and loving every minute of it.”

After those initial four years, Nelsen and fellow FORE employee Andy Fraley launched CoManage, a spin-out company providing complementary services to FORE’s products. “Once you see something that the customers want and that nobody else is doing, it becomes tempting to go after it,” Nelsen says. Eventually, a much larger Canadian company named Syndesis purchased CoManage in 2005.

Fraley stayed with the company through yet another acquisition, this time by an Indian company. By that time Nelsen had started his current endeavor, a podcast-related company called TalkShoe.  In a nice twist of fate, Mark Juliano, the entrepreneur and FORE employee who convinced Nelsen to come to Pittsburgh over a decade ago, is now a senior vice president at TalkShoe. And naturally, several other FORE alumni have worked with Nelsen at CoManage and TalkShoe.

Staying for Keeps

Although Razi Imam didn’t work for FORE, he did work with Nelsen at CoManage. After leaving his position there, Imam accepted a position with a company in the D.C. area. He and Saman Haqqi, his wife and a former FORE employee, had already found a house in Virginia and were ready to move when they decided that the time was ripe to start their own company. “We sat back and looked at our options and said, ‘If we’re going to build anything, let’s build it in Pittsburgh,’” says Haqqi.

In 2004, Imam founded Landslide Technologies, a sales workstyle management company. Joining him as founding members were Anumpam Singh, an engineer who had previously worked for both FORE and Freemarkets, as well as Michael Green, who was the global vice president of sales at FORE and Marconi. Green and FORE founder Eric Cooper are Landslide investors and serve on its board.

According to Haqqi, Landslide’s vice president of marketing, the company currently has about 80 employees, with 30 of those based in Pittsburgh. She says that Landslide strives to create an atmosphere similar to what she experienced at FORE. “The cool thing about FORE Systems was the way the founders and senior management were able to maintain the close culture of a start-up,” Haqqi says. “We all felt like we were making a difference and the people at the top knew about us, even those of us at the bottom. Landslide is trying to capture that type of personal, energetic, and loyal atmosphere.”

The More, The Merrier

Local entrepreneurs and economic development professionals agree that start-up success breeds start-up success. As Atul Bansal, CEO of TimeSys  puts it, “A whole business ecosystem is developing because of FORE Systems.” Bansal was the president of the Network Control Technology Division at FORE before founding Laurel Networks in 1999 with other FORE alumni. “When we walked away from FORE, we didn’t have business plan, but we knew we had enough strength and skills in people that we could build something,” he says.

After ECI Telecom bought Laurel Networks in 2005, Bansal stayed on for about 18 months to help complete the transition. In April of this year, he accepted the position with TimeSys, a Pittsburgh-based company with approximately 35 employees. Bansal says that the company is actively hiring and has aggressive growth plans to hit 50 employees by the end of June.

Bansal is also a charter member of the Pittsburgh chapter of TiE , a global not-for-profit network of entrepreneurs and professionals dedicated to the advancement of entrepreneurship. “We need more people to take a risk and start a business,” says Bansal. “People here are ready to help,” he assures.

Here to Help

One of those ready to help is Ron Bianchini, Chairman of the Board for Innovation Works. Bianchini came to Pittsburgh as a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon after receiving his undergraduate degree from MIT. Upon graduation in 1989, Bianchini taught at CMU until 1996 when he left to start Scalable Networks. Just nine months later he sold the company to FORE, where he became a vice president.

Marconi offered Bianchini a significant promotion after its acquisition of FORE, but he wanted a position with more customer interaction. “So I resigned,” he says. A few months later he and five other FORE/Marconi alumni started Spinnaker, a network storage company. In 2004, Spinnaker was sold to Network Appliance  where Bianchini served as the vice president of scalable systems until this spring.

When Innovation Works asked him to join its board in 2000, Bianchini says, “It was an easy decision for me. The region needs more successful start-ups like FORE to become anchor companies. Then you’ll see the brightest people leave and start their own businesses. What they need is seed funding.”

Other local businesses that have been founded and funded by FORE alumni include Netronome Systems in Cranberry and Panasas  in the West End. All in all, the people of FORE Systems, including the founders, management, and employees, continue to make a positive impact in the region. So the story really goes more like this:

Once upon a time, there was a little company that could. This company grew up and became very successful. In fact, it became so successful that bigger companies decided to buy it. And then some of the people who’d worked for that first company had to find new jobs and new challenges. And that was just the beginning.

Jennifer McGuiggan, a freelance writer and editor, is owner of The Word Cellar . Her last article for Pop City was about adventure racing.