THE INTERROGATION ROOM

What’s the one decision you made in the last 12 months that kept you up at night and would you make it again?

Scrapping or continuing on a project we have been working on since 2019. I won’t mention the product, this is no space for publicity. The iterations, with an international engineering team, turned out to be so slow and irresponsive but could not have done it in-house. The alternative being throwing huge amounts (to our standard) of private cash at it. Decided to grind it out for our existing clients’ so their systems keep improving. So yes, I’d do it again, Britney.

What’s a hard truth about your company or sector that you think most of your peers are still avoiding?

Spacex killed our maritime (GEO VSAT) business. There is no way around that. If you still have some legacy contracts and holding on to them for dear life, the best to you. But otherwise: no SD-WAN, Speedfusion bonding, Cybersecurity service will extract the same revenue as you had from VSAT. Note that our peers are the David sized VARs who fought the Goliaths of this world.

What’s your actual plan if your main supplier, satellite, partner, or market access disappears tomorrow?

I’ve always been thinking 5 years ahead, this resulted in a form of serial enterpreneurship (no you will not find all my attempts on LinkedIn :-)) where there is always a new idea on the horizon. The new pet project, which has me completely excited is Orbital Whispers. No need to explain it as you are on it. And then that is already being spinned.

Which buzzword do you pretend to understand in meetings but secretly don’t or wish would disappear forever?

AI. It’s everywhere and yes, LLMs are everywhere poking holes in our daily professional and personal life. But do we even know / grasp what it can do to us humans? Stop putting an AI label on your multiorbit multiband router. It’s a router, it probably doesn’t even use ML. Just rules. If anyone cars to explain actual (not marketing fluff) AI routing over orbits, bands, QoS, content routing & prioritizing while everything is encrypted anyway, please do reach out.

How often do you hear honest feedback from the lowest level of your organization and what was the last thing they told you that stung?

I am also the lowest level in my organization so I can safely ignore everything I say to myself. But seriously, I try to find out when I am trying to fool myself; Not easy, I’m taht good at it 🙂

If your main competitor hired away your top three people tomorrow, what’s the first thing that breaks?

I would have a new job 🙂 So the first thing that would break is the competitor’s bank account. For the company, that would mean THE END.

What’s one strategic bet you made that hasn’t worked but you’re still publicly defending?

I think that it would be our Hyper-G cellular solution which took too long to develop. I learned from this that speed is of essence. What was a state-of-the-art amzing device pre-Starlink saw its requirement (at least for the mass market) decline. Well, let’s be hones, annihilated. Now, I still advocate it for our larger clients but only part of larger systems.

What’s your private prediction about your industry that you haven’t said out loud… yet?

I think I have pretty much expressed every doom scenario for our industry (Maritime GEO Satellite Comms). I do fear major changes in industry in general with AI setting in. There is no control over it, they don’t even really understand how it is working … it just does. And that’s scary.

What’s the one thing you’ve said in interviews or panels that you didn’t actually believe?

I am so lucky that I am not being invited to panels nor interviews, so I have no professional need to say something I actually don’t believe. I think that it would make no sense to proclaim things I cannot defend.

You’ve just been given truth serum and 60 seconds on a live mic. What do you say to your board, your clients, or your rivals? Pick one.

I don’t have a board. So I’ll pick the clients (rivals are too easy) Guys, thanks for the confidence, it’s been such a great ride for the last 20 almost years hopping on all your ships and having total control of your comms just over my smartphone. I know you all got Starlink now, and you got it from someone else who could spend a few mellons to be allowed to sell it to you. If you can, hang on to what we still have, even if it is less than before, apart from a client you and your crew have become decade old friends (those who go on board fixing internet know). 10 more years, then I’ll retire. <humble bow>