Copyright © 2002, W. David Tarver

I have fulfilled my life's dream -- to start and build my own engineering company. To make neat things and see other people use them to improve their own work. To find out the answers to some long-standing questions about life and business and race relations. To get to know people and places all around the world, and to feel comfortable with those people and in those places. To achieve financial independence and to experience the freedom it brings.

In October of 1983, I left my position as an engineering manager at AT&T Bell Laboratories to start a new company -- Telecom Analysis Systems (TAS). I started this company in the basement of my home in Little Silver, New Jersey with two of my Bell Labs colleagues, Steve Moore and Charles Simmons. We were three young African American men embarking on a journey of discovery in the world of business and technology.

Our first product was a telephone network simulator -- an arcane-sounding but necessary instrument that allowed people to test modems and other devices that communicate over telephone lines. In subsequent years, we expanded our product line to include test systems for wireless and high-speed digital communications devices. We sold equipment to many of the biggest names in the communications industry, helped to fuel the Internet explosion, and grew to be a multi-million dollar company. If you ever used a modem to access the Internet, chances are it was tested using TAS equipment. If you use a cell phone, there's a good chance that it, too was tested on TAS equipment.

(Original TAS Business Plan [PDF])

I had known since I was a teenager that I would start an engineering company. My desire to start a company was shaped by two powerful movements that occurred during my youth. The first was the civil-rights movement, which awakened me and my contemporaries to new opportunities and gave us cause to struggle. The second was the semiconductor and microprocessor revolution that began with the invention of the transistor. The confluence of these movements resulted in a powerful serendipity -- so powerful that I often felt that I was wasting time going to school. I remember sitting in my classroom at Central High School in Flint Michigan and drawing pictures of what my company's headquarters building would look like. In those days, I called my company simply Tarver Electronics. A few years later, while in college at General Motors Institute, I arrived at the acronym TAS.

I didn't have the nerve or foresight of Bill Gates, who dropped out of Harvard to start Microsoft, so I stuck with school. I started college in 1971, at General Motors Institute in Flint. This was a convenient choice because a) it was located in my home town, and b) it was essentially free. In fact, GMI students earned enough money during the work portions of their work-study program to pay for school and purchase a nice car. Some even owned homes!

GMI was a good school, and I gained a lot of practical knowledge about business and engineering there, but I came to realize that it just wasn't for me. I wanted to change the world, and General Motors didn't seem to be the place for that. The atmosphere was too staid, too conservative, and the business relationships too incestuous. I also wanted to meet and get to know people with a variety of backgrounds and interests -- not just automobile industry people. For these reasons, after two years at GMI, in the fall of 1973, I transferred to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Before I left GMI, I had an experience that changed my life. One weekend in 1972, I was hanging out on the campus with nothing to do. I wandered over to the auditorium where a Moog concert -- an electronic music concert -- was in progress. I remember sitting there on the floor enchanted by the sounds I heard, and fascinated by watching the engineer-musicians configure patch cords and play the keyboard simultaneously. This combination of engineering and art struck a chord in me, and that chord has resonated to this day. Engineering, art, communications -- I had found the tools with which to build the my career. That day I decided -- I had to build a music synthesizer, one that was even better than what I saw on the stage that night. Soon thereafter, I decided upon a name for the project -- Tarv Acoustic Synthesis. The acronym 'TAS' became the initials for the company that I started 12 years later.

Transferring to U of M was the best move I could have made. I needed to get away from Flint, away from the comfort and safety of home. Ann Arbor was only 50 miles from Flint, but it was a different world. Whereas Flint was composed of two types of people, black and white, Ann Arbor had many types of people from many places. My first roommates at U of M were from Turkey and India. The academic environment was very different too. Whereas high school and even GMI were generally supportive environments, Uof M was more cutthroat competitive. Moreover, I often felt that I was battling not only my fellow students to succeed, but also my professors. For example, my father died less than a month after I started at UM. The funeral date coincided with the date of the first big exam in my electronic networks class. My professor refused to allow me to defer taking the exam until after the funeral! Later in my career at UM, I actually caught another professor cheating me out of an 'A' in a very important course. After confronting him and his colleague, I got the grade changed from 'B' to 'A'.

Still, U of M was a great school, and I came into my own there. I realized that I had a strong affinity for communications theory and digital signal processing. When I arrived at Michigan, I thought that I might be a biomedical engineer or even a doctor, but after taking courses in these areas I realized that I didn't want to pursue them. During my senior year, I took a small business policy course in the business school and that course fueled my desire to start my own business. In between classes and in my spare time, I continued to pursue the dream that began at GMI -- I designed my own digital music synthesizer. The synthesizer eventually became my Master's degree independent-study project.

One of the best things I took away from my Michigan experience was the knowledge that I could compete, toe-to-toe, with some of the best engineering students in the world. That knowledge and confidence would serve me well in later years.

I received a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering in 1975, and received the Master's degree in 1976. Before leaving the University, I had one of those "fork in the road" decisions to make. I had been accepted into the PhD program at University of Illinois, and I also had an offer to work at A&T Bell Laboratories. This was a tough decision, because although I knew the path I had to take, the allure of being called "Dr. Tarver" was quite strong. In the end, I did what I knew I had to do -- I accepted the job at Bell Labs. I felt that this was the only course that was consistent with my goal of starting a business.

Upon finishing at U of M, I went straight to AT&T Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey. Working at The Labs was the fulfillment of a dream, because Bell Labs was like Mecca for an electrical engineer. Working there was like playing with your hobby and getting paid -- paid well -- for doing it. There were thousands of interesting people, many of whom were the tops in their chosen field. Development budgets were, for all practical purposes, unlimited. There was little or no time pressure to complete a project. No one ever got fired. The mission seemed to be: play with technology, develop cool things, and if those things get adopted by AT&T, so much the better.

Bell Labs employed many black people from around the world who were skilled in engineering, physics, computer science, and other fields. I had never seen so many highly intelligent black folks in one place! Even the black secretaries and administrative assistants I knew seemed to be top-notch.

Working among my talented black, Asian, Indian, Latino, and white colleagues, I learned that I was not alone, not an aberration. I was part of a wave -- the first wave -- of African-Americans and other U.S. minorities who were set to succeed at the leading edge of a leading industry. Through seminars and talks given at the Labs, I became more aware of African and African-American history. It was at Bell Labs that I first learned about Paul Robeson, who became a heroic figure to me. Bell Labs even sponsored something called the Urban Minorities Workshop to give its employees a better view of life from the perspective of a black person. I participated in one of these workshops, and it changed my outlook, and the outlook of many of my colleagues.

I actually did do work at Bell Labs! I designed, developed, and deployed a series of remotely controlled instruments that made it easier for telephone companies to manage their data communications facilities. Later, I managed a group of engineers who developed diagnostic systems for modem networks. I took part in a pioneering development of a graphics and image communications workstation. I led a small, elite team in the development of an advanced, touch-screen based telephone.

By these experiences and others, I developed the skills and technologies I would need to start a business. I developed the skills required to manage teams of highly talented engineers. I met many people who would be key to my later success in business, either as employees or advisors or customers. Through my work on communications tests and diagnostics, I came up with the idea for our first product. Most notably, I met Steve and Charles, the engineers who would be my co-founders.

I don't want to give the impression that everything at Bell Labs was rosy. As a young engineer, I endured racial insults in meetings, or sometimes just sitting at my desk. As a manager, I witnessed highly rated and talented blacks and Asians being passed over during promotion discussions, ostensibly because they just weren't "management material". One of the worst aspects of my time at Bell Labs was that I was always conscious of my status as a member of a minority group. There was constant insinuation that blacks' gains at the Labs came via Affirmative Action, at the expense of more "qualified" whites. I believe that this "AA climate"; the notion that blacks were getting more than they deserved at the Labs; made it much harder for me to gain the acceptance of my peers. My observation was that, in fact, blacks usually got less than they deserved at Bell Labs, and I was determined to prove that by going out and establishing my value in the open marketplace, by starting and building a business of my own.

On a business level, Bell Labs became a very frustrating place as 'divestiture' - the 1984 breakup of the AT&T telecommunications monopoly -- approached. As the company approached the competitive era, I realized that we had lots of talent, but couldn't produce competitive products. Although Bell Labs had for years hired the best and brightest graduates of the leading schools, the staff was not hardened by the competitive wars that other companies experienced. As a result, the transition from protected monopoly to free market competitor was a wrenching one. The company seemed to lack direction. It seemed that there was a major staff reorganization every other month. The bottom line for me was that, by the fall of 1983, Bell Labs ceased to be a fun place to work.

Fortunately, I had been planning all along to start a business. For a time, I made plans alone. One day, while walking to lunch at the Bell Labs cafeteria, I recruited Steve and Charles to join me. We recruited a few others, and started working like a band of exiles on a business plan and product prototype. In the latter half of 1983, when things reached the height of confusion at Bell Labs, and the project I was leading was capriciously canceled, I knew that it was time to go. I resigned in October, 1983.

That same month, I became the first "full time" TAS employee. Steve and Charles continued to work at Bell Labs by day, and to moonlight in my basement by night. Our goal was to get financing, finish the prototype, and get ready to produce the first product. Steve resigned the Labs and joined TAS full time in February, 1984. In May, we shipped our first product, right from my basement at 4 Pine Drive in Little Silver, New Jersey!

(TAS Certificate of Incorporation [PDF])

In June, we finally left the basement. We moved to a storefront in the "mini-mall" in Red Bank, New Jersey. Our first real business address was hardly an ideal one: we were sandwiched between a tanning salon and a travel agency. There was a sandwich shop, the Side Door Deli, right upstairs from us, and McDonald's was across the street. For free entertainment, we had a modeling school at the other end of the building. Yes, this was a non-traditional location for a manufacturing business, but it worked for us. Charles finally left Bell Labs in September of 1984. Our exit from corporate America was complete.

Like many other start-up businesses, TAS got off to a shaky start. Getting money wasn't easy -- I had maxed out my credit cards, and had taken out a second mortgage on my house. We applied for and got an SBA-guaranteed bank loan, and that provided the capital we needed to bridge the gap until we had income from product sales.

Making those first sales was tough. We had no track record in business. We had an unproven product. We had no sales or distribution network. In fact, we had no sales or marketing experience. We had a business plan that most people couldn't even understand, much less get excited about. To an outsider, it must have looked like we were crazy.

We nearly went broke in that first year. Sometimes failure didn't look like such a bad option -- we could return to our cushy Bell Labs jobs, probably with a raise! We didn't fail, though. With tight belts and a little luck, we made it through 1984. We never looked back.

By 1987, we were paper millionaires. Our sales were growing rapidly, and we were adding new products and new customers. We took some time in 1987 to define a vision and a strategic direction for TAS. This is when we decided that our mission was to provide "tools" -- electronic test and analysis instruments -- for people who create communications equipment. This vision would guide our future business and product development decisions.

By 1989, we had already achieved many of our goals. We had penetrated many of the leading communications equipment manufacturers. We had battled with and defeated key competitors. We had expanded our line to include innovative new products. We had expanded our markets to include Europe and Asia, and Japan had already become our largest and most important market outside the U.S.

Then came '91-92. The country was experiencing a recession, and the months leading up to the Gulf War were filled with uncertainty. Our sales stalled in 1991, and then fell in 1992. This was our first sales decline, and our profits went to practically zero. Our reversal of fortune could not be blamed entirely on the economy. The reduction in our business was due to both external and internal causes. We had lost the edge, the hunger, that we had developed during our days in the basement, and many of our employees did not share our fervor for success.

I was determined to work like a dog to get the company back to a position of rapid growth, and then to exit. Even before starting TAS, I had planned to do something else, something non-technical, at midlife. I wanted to have more time to spend with my family, and to get more involved in my community. The success of TAS would give me the money and time -- an endowment, if you will -- to make all of this possible. The setback at TAS was a threat to these plans, and so it had to be resolved. Steve and Charles had similar feelings. They felt that they had worked hard and sacrificed alot since the start of our efforts, and they wanted to start reaping the fruits of our labor.

I decided to re-focus the company by returning to "startup mode". While I was searching for models to follow, I was fortunate to stumble upon a new book about the beginnings of Microsoft called "Hard Drive". I was struck by the how similar the experiences of the two companies were (except for the number of zeroes behind the sales figures!), and how Microsoft was still operating like a startup even when it was a $100 million company. In contrast, we had become a bloated and lazy $6 million company! Many employees were more concerned with what time they were going home than they were with getting great products out the door. This had to change.

I organized a company meeting to lay out the new plan -- a return to a hard-driving, "startup" mode -- and to get feedback from the staff. We gave every employee a copy of the book to make the point. Following the meeting, we held a series of discussions and forums with employees to identify the specific changes that needed to be made in each area of the business, and to address issues, concerns and questions.

A significant proportion of the staff did not share the desire to return to startup mode. Most of these employees ended up leaving on their own, but others were asked to leave. Those of us who remained attacked our business opportunities with new energy and focus. This was an exhilarating time, one that provided many key learning experiences. I learned alot about myself. In particular, I learned that, like a basketball player in a tense situation, I "wanted the ball". I thrived on the adversity and uncertainty. By the end of 1994, we had the business back on a strong growth track.

In the latter half of 1994, we started making earnest plans to sell the business. After reviewing several potential deals, we sold the company to Bowthorpe plc, a medium-sized British multinational company. The sale was completed in November, 1995, on the day before Thanksgiving. We had achieved one of our main goals -- financial independence -- and I had fulfilled the promise I made to Steve and Charles back in 1981 that we would all be millionaires.

TAS continued to grow strongly after the sale. In fact, we were by far the best performing company in the Bowthorpe group. At the time of the sale, Bowthorpe was transitioning to a new CEO, Nick Brookes. He wanted to define a new vision for the company. I suggested that Bowthorpe adopt the vision and business strategy that TAS had formulated back in 1987. Within a few years, Bowthorpe did adopt the TAS business strategy, and redefined itself as largely a communications test equipment company. I became a Group President in charge of the communications businesses, and Charles Simmons became president of TAS. Steve Moore, the consummate engineer, remained as the VP of product development at TAS.

I had not intended to stay with Bowthorpe after the sale -- I was ready to move on with my life. I stayed because the terms of the sale bound me to the company for three years (the ubiquitous "earn-out"), and because I wanted to leave my "baby" in the best possible hands.

In 1997, Nick Brookes had asked me to consider the role of Group President, responsible for building and overseeing a communications test equipment business. I didn't want the job. I had left the corporate world when I exited AT&T in 1983, and I never wanted to return. I went so far as to identify a person who I felt could do a good job as Group President. I recruited My Chung, whom I met during my early days at Bell Labs when he was a salesman for Hewlett-Packard. Nick hired My, but he still wanted me to stay on. He convinced me to stay on as co-Group President with My. Ultimately, I took the job because I felt I could have more impact and influence, and could create the best possible environment for my friends and colleagues at TAS. I also felt that it would be a good learning experience for me to work at the top level of a global business.

We were very successful. Through growth and acquisitions, we built the communications business into an enterprise approaching $1bn sales. Our business became the central focus for Bowthorpe. In less than three years we tripled the share price of the overall company. We became a major force in our industry, seemingly overnight. Ultimately, Bowthorpe changed its name to Spirent plc to reflect the transformation of the company.

In 1999, I decided that the time was right to leave. It was a tough decision, even though I had planned to leave all along. The business had grown to the point where it needed to have one person firmly in control, and Nick wanted me to be that person. It was a great position in a great company in a great industry at the peak of growth and prosperity. It was the worst time to leave, but it was the best time to leave.

We had achieved everything I had hoped to achieve with TAS, and more. We proved that three black guys could build a high-technology business from scratch. We gained invaluable experience in business and human relationships. Together, we achieved financial independence. We created a work environment where people enjoyed coming to work every day, and where people did not think about race very often as they went about their work. Even the sale of the business proved something, because it provided validation of the value of what we had built. The business vision was further validated by the fact that the parent was able to build such a large business based upon our vision.

We ended up making a lot of money, but I wasn't motivated by the money. I was motivated primarily by the challenge, the cause. I wanted to answer the question: "Can we do it?" I believed with all my heart that we could. We HAD to succeed. If we succeeded, it meant that the American Dream could work for us, too. If we didn't succeed, the answer would be inconclusive: It could mean that we just weren't up to the task. Or it could mean that the high-tech world was not ready to accept three black men in corporate leadership and ownership positions.

In many ways, we were performing an experiment. In 1983, there was no clear track record of blacks starting a high-tech company in the basement and making a success of it. Engineering is different from traditional black-owned business. If we were to be successful, most of our employees would be white. Most of the potential customers were white. Most of the legal and financial people and other professionals available to assist our business were white. There was simply no black infrastructure in place in our business universe.

We had to ask ourselves some very fundamental questions: Would white employees of high tech firms, many of whom had the most conservative outlook, buy products from us? Would white engineers work for us? Would white bank officials loan money to us? Would white lawyers, accountants, and other professionals represent us fairly and competently? Could we create an environment where, unlike Bell Labs, we and our employees wouldn't go to work thinking about race every day? An environment where we could just focus on our work, on creating great products?

In the end, we succeeded for the reasons that all great engineering companies succeed. We succeeded because we had a great group of engineers, managers, and staff. We succeeded because we consistently, aggressively identified customer needs and then set out to satisfy those needs better than anyone else. That is what we spent most of our time thinking about at TAS. The best part is that, unlike my AT&T days, once we got to work, we hardly ever had to think about race. That fact relieved a big burden, and that in turn unleashed an incredible amount of pent-up productivity.

The TAS experience says a lot about us, but that is not why it is significant. Our experience is significant because it says so much about everyone else. It confirms what we now see examples of every day - that racism can be overcome. That most people, when considering products, will give more weight to advancing their economic self-interest than to the seller’s race. That people all over the world are accepting of new ideas and new faces. That people are getting better.