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Russ: This is The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at TheBusinessMakers.com, and it's guest time on the show. And I'm very pleased to have a repeat guest, because with me this morning I have Billy Ladin, CEO of Internet America. Billy, welcome back to The BusinessMakers Show.
Billy: Thank you, Russ, and I have to tell you how excited I am to be here, not only for the second time, but you and I have been acquaintances and now friends for 25 or 30 years, and it's always fun to talk over our mutual endeavors together.
Russ: Well, we have both experienced quite a bit of business startup in the technology world, and it's something you and I share in common.
Billy: And, Russ, I have to tell you I love this program. I listen to it all the time. Now honestly, I don't always listen to it live, but every week I download it to my iPod and I listen to it going to and from work, etc. I love to hear the entrepreneurs, to hear about the entrepreneurs, to hear from the entrepreneurs that you interview. I love this program.
Russ: Thank you very much. But we're here today to talk about the new Internet America endeavor. Tell us about the new thing that Internet America is doing now.
Billy: Russ, as you know Internet America is primarily involved in delivering high-speed broadband internet to rural, underserved, and non-served markets around Texas wirelessly.
Russ: Yep.
Billy: But we have a new endeavor, and we're excited about it, and it fits our entire market and it fits the world we're in and what we're doing, and that is what we call video meetings.
Russ: Okay.
Billy: Today Internet America is providing, either through hosting or by sale of equipment, desktop video meeting or video conferencing that is, I think, phenomenal. It's up-close, personal, face-to-face meetings, ad hoc, when you want it, where you want it, from wherever you are, whether it's your office, your home, or on the beach. And we're really excited because our vision is that video is finally here for the masses, and more particularly, for business.
Russ: Okay, tell us what you're gonna call this new product.
Billy: Do you remember, Russ, that we started out with a company called PDQ.net?
Russ: How could I forget? (Laughter)
Billy: How Rudy T. gets to the internet.
Russ: Right.
Billy: As you may remember, in the '90s PDQ.net brought you high-quality internet service, primarily to the Houston market. Today PDQMeetings.net is bringing you high-quality, desktop video conferencing.
Russ: Okay. Well, tell us why you're excited about video now. I mean, it's been around for a while.
Billy: Yes, it has. I was actually involved in video conferencing in the early 1990s through PictureTel and Polycom, but at that time there were things missing that made it very difficult and very expensive to use video conferencing. First of all, there was not easy access, nor affordable access, to high-speed communications. Today the internet is everywhere: it's at home, it's in your business, it's affordable, it's fast, it's high quality. Secondly, in the early '90s, as good as they were, the microcomputer didn't have the processing power - not even near the processing power - it does today, in both graphics, memory, disk capacity, nor did it have built-in cameras - webcams, as well them - microphones, etc. So the computers are available. And then finally, today we have a combination of a recession and somewhat of a fear of terrorism, and those two make us very conscious of travel, the cost of travel, and the wear and tear on our bodies. So we've come into this industry at a time when we have easy availability of communications, great computers, and an economic need to use video meetings instead of traveling.
Russ: Okay. Well, I'm curious, what was it that triggered this idea?
Billy: Russ, in my business experience some of the best ideas have come by accident or déjà vu. In the spring of '09, our president and chief operating officer of Internet America was involved in a motorcycle accident and was gonna be laid up, had two surgeries, and out of commission for three to six months.
Russ: Whoa.
Billy: Now we're a small company, and we need that president and chief operating officer. You didn't want me to go back to work that hard, did you, and do both jobs?
Russ: Right.
Billy: And I really was perplexed. What should we do? But as usual, I'd been staying up with the development of the technology for video conferencing and I'd been testing a few products. And I said, "Oh, my gosh, cross your fingers. Maybe, just maybe, this would help us." And I went to work full time, finishing my research on video, and we came up with what we believed then, and we now know, is the absolute best desktop product you can get. It's a product by a company by the name of Vidyo, and we went ahead and rented a system, much like PDQMeetings does today. We rented a system and installed it in our president's home. And then while we were at it, we installed it in our people's houses and homes around Texas so that our president could talk to everyone over video. Interestingly, within a month of the deployment of the desktop video, our company was running as well, maybe better, than it was before. Why did that happen? First of all, our president no longer had to spend an hour driving to work in the mornings and an hour going home in the afternoons. We found he was there and available earlier in the morning, later in the afternoon. Now it happened because he was confined to a hospital bed at home -
Russ: Right, right.
Billy: He was always available!
Russ: Right. (Laughter)
Billy: Part of his job had been not only to be in our office here in Houston, but to go around Texas - go to Dallas, go to San Antonio - and visit people. He would do that, what, once a month? That really wasn't as often as he wanted to, but again, it's expensive and it's tiring. Now suddenly he had video in his hospital room, then in his bedroom, and he could talk to Dallas and Austin and San Antonio every day, ten times a day. And the result was that his communications dramatically improved with our outlying areas.
Russ: That is such a cool story, Billy. And I've got to tell you, as you well know, I've been using the product with the BusinessMakers staff, and I can completely understand and believe the enhanced productivity. We're gonna be back with more with Billy Ladin, CEO of Internet America, talking about the new PDQMeetings.net. product. You're listening to The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at TheBusinessMakers.com.
[Aflac Commercial]
Russ: This is The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at TheBusinessMakers.com, and continuing on with Billy Ladin, CEO of Internet America, and talking about PDQMeetings. Now as we left the last segment, Billy, I told you that the audience, that The BusinessMakers staff has been using the product, and it is very impressive to see everybody. We all know that body language is so important to communications, but it seems like that body language is so much more encapsulated in seeing somebody's facial expressions, and I find it to be totally productive. I describe it as a multiple-user Skype system. Is that pretty accurate?
Billy: Russ, that's fairly accurate; however, it's not only a multi-user, multi-person, up to 50 people Skype, it's far, far superior video. It's like the best video you could imagine, and yet it comes from your laptop or your desktop computer. You don't have to go buy expensive, $25,000.00, $100,000.00 systems and put them in a conference room and then reserve that conference room. It's on your desk or in your home when you want it. All you need is a computer that has either a built-in webcam and microphone, or you can put an external one that you buy it for very little money. So it's inexpensive and yet the up-close, personal video will blow you away. I can see your facial expressions, whether you're feeling well today, whether you're paying attention to the meeting, or whether you agree or don't agree without your saying a word.
Russ: Comparing it to the original teleconferencing, the systems that you had to spend a lot of money for that you've alluded to, I've had experiences on those, too. But the up-close nature of this thing is impressive.
Billy: Cool.
Russ: So let's take it a little bit further. How in the world do you plan to get it out there and get it introduced to the market and ramp up the business?
Billy: There are two things that are probably motivating me. Number one, I'm getting old and lazy, and I don't want to go very far, and I love to sell to Houstonians. And secondly, what I love to do is take products that I use personally, that I find very effective and very important to my lifestyle, and deliver them to other businesspeople in the city of Houston. So PDQMeetings.net is going to really focus on selling our desktop video conferencing to Houstonians. I've been a really lucky person to be part of some major changes in the use and adoption of technology. I think that video meetings, video conferencing - whatever you want to call it - is now available and affordable. And in the next five years I personally believe it's gonna become a very important way that we communicate. It reminds me - in 1977 when I had just formed Computer Craft, and I was working with Steve Jobs from Apple Computer, 'cause we were an Apple only dealer in those days - Steve was sitting in my kitchen and we were working hard on the Apple II. And he said to me, "Billy, one day this is gonna be a more common appliance than your kitchen telephone." I didn't disbelieve him, but I can't tell you that I understood at that time. And you look at it today: there are more microcomputers than there are telephones by a mile. It's my prediction, it's my feeling, that video is gonna become a very major source of communications, all of us are gonna be using it.
Russ: Okay. I definitely want to go down the path to make sure those listeners that are listening right now understand a little bit more about the background of Billy Ladin. But before we leave the PDQMeetings segment, what we're gonna do here, too - for those of you listening on the radio, we're gonna record another portion of this interview, actually capturing the PDQMeetings video, and it's available at TheBusinessMakers.com, and I would recommend people go and check it out and see how this new method of multi-user, face-to-face communications online really works. You okay with that, Billy?
Billy: Okay with it? I love it. I'm so excited that we're gonna try this. You and I have talked about it before, Russ, and I think it's gonna be not only exciting and effective, but it's gonna be fun to try and use the technology in The BusinessMakers Show.
Russ: All right, fantastic. So let's move back in time now. I want our listeners that don't know the Billy Ladin story to know how many of these technology companies you've pulled off the ground and got up into the air and flew them successfully. In fact, you already mentioned Steve Jobs. I understand at one time you were operating the largest Apple dealership in the world, is that right?
Billy: Yes, it was. There was a point, but it was early in the - late '70s, early '80s, when we actually accounted for more than ten percent of Apple's volume.
Russ: Okay, but Computer Craft was not your first startup at all, right?
Billy: No, and Russ, how lucky can one person be? I've been involved in some wonderful new products. Now honestly, I've always also been the black sheep of my family because I keep changing jobs. (Laughter) I either have attention deficit disorder or something else. But going back, in the early '70s I started a company called M-Tel. It became one of the larger paging companies, and we got into paging just when it went from vacuum tubes into solid state. And that led into a really exciting technology: cellular telephones.
Russ: Okay.
Billy: And we started on cellular telephones in the mid-'70s. And a quick story: We had gone out for financing for our cellular development, and First City National Bank said, "Okay, we'll finance you, but to just be careful, our loan committee wants you to do some research and show that cellular phones are going to be acceptable." So we spent a lot of money out of our pocket at that time, $50,000.00, to do research. The research came back and said, "People aren't interested in cellular phones. They don't want to have a phone ringing in their car. They want to get away from the phone." (Laughter) So we were involved in early cellular. And then in 1977 I started Computer Craft as an Apple dealer. And it was a chain of retail microcomputer stores that grew up and did pretty well. Ultimately we carried not only the Apple, but the IBM, the Compaq, the Osborn, and we helped to develop the first computer superstores. From there I ended up starting PDQ.net, an internet service provider. So I've been early in cellular, paging, internet. Now I'm not early - I may be late - but I'm excited about the evolution into video conferencing. Russ, in fairness, I'm just telling you about the successes or the big hits.
Russ: Okay.
Billy: You need to know that there've been some in there that you might call failures. Now I've never had a company go out of business or bankrupt, but there were ideas that I thought were gonna be great that didn't turn out that way, or I was way too early. So it's not all roses.
Russ: Well, thank you for sharing that. We're going to be back with more with Billy Ladin, CEO of Internet America, and we'll be back with more with Billy after this. You're listening to The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at TheBusinessMakers.com.
[Aflac Commercial]
Russ: This is The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at TheBusinessMakers.com. I'm continuing on with Billy Ladin, CEO of Internet America, talking about his new endeavor, PDQMeetings. And I want to underscore once again to our listeners, we're gonna do a shorter version of this interview over PDQMeetings video system and record it and put it on the site at TheBusinessMakers.com. So you can go check that out, too. Now tell me where you go from here, Billy. From my calculations, this is Chapter Five in the Billy Ladin serial entrepreneurial world. I mean, after all these other things - pagers, cell phones, internet, PCs - my goodness. Do you have confidence that this one's gonna just take off?
Billy: Russ, your listeners have to see it for themselves. It's not what you think of as a traditional video conferencing. It's on your desktop or on your notebook, up close and personal, big faces. The communications is dramatically improved, and there are three reasons that you not only want to see and try the video meetings, but three reasons it improves your life. First, it saves tremendous wear and tear on your body. You don't have to travel nearly as much. But, number two, it dramatically improves communications because you see the person and meet with the person way more often. And thirdly, in this time of terrorism and in this difficult economic environment, it saves you lots of money.
Russ: Okay
Billy: You can get into video meetings in either of two ways. We'll host it for you - it's inexpensive and you can get going for next to nothing. Or we can install equipment in your offices. Go to PDQMeetings.net.
Russ: Okay.
Billy: That's the URL. Learn from our website, and then if you're interested, call our seven-day a week support center. And you can learn more about it, or they can get you online right there while you're talking to us. Try it for yourself and find out.
Russ: Okay, great. Billy, I really appreciate you giving us some more of your time and sharing the story of your new endeavor.
Billy: Russ, thanks for having me, and I'm excited to be here and I'm excited about video.
Russ: Great. That's Billy Ladin, CEO of Internet America, and you're listening to The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at TheBusinessMakers.com.