Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Suresh Madhavan named to my Cyber Privateer Fantasy League team

Today I'm naming PointCross founder and CEO Suresh Madhavan to my Cyber Privateer Fantasy League team. Originally from India, this brilliant iconoclast once roomed with Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time and The Grand Design). Given his off-the-charts intelligence, the pair-up was no accident. This non-linear thinker is the kind of a guy who, if his son decided to play little league baseball, would cut down an Ash tree to make the boy his own bat. Suresh has done everything from designing hydrofoils for racing boats to architecting a non-relational context-driven way of handling business data. And his go-for-the-throat business sense is legendary, since he routinely solves staff incompetence amongst his customers by betting the offending idiot fired (a process I jokingly call "outplacement with extreme prejudice").

Suresh would play quite well with other members of my fantasy league. His hydrofoil designs would probably give Larry Ellison's racing yacht another couple of knots. He smart enough to give Jeff Walker workable alternative architectures. His sense of right and wrong would resonate with Marc Benioff and My "Mrs. Black" Communications and Parley officer Dr. Nancy M. Harvey.

Finally, Suresh is the consummate warrior. Not long after the 9/11 terrorist attack, we were chatting about the world situation. I love "net-net" situation one-liners, and out of the blue Suresh said, "Why the hell haven't we nuked Mecca?" A good warrior net net, right? Always on the lookout for gut-wrenching headlines, I catalogued this for future use. A few years later, one of my buddies had bought the Wendover, Utah airfield where the Enola Gay and Box Car bombers were outfitted to spectacularly end the war with Japan. The city of Wendover had asked my friend to come up with a billboard to promote tourism to the Utah side of the town. The Nevada side of Wendover was glitzy with casinos and golf courses, being just over the border from Utah. But the Utah side of Wendover looks like…well…it kind of looks like the Enola Gay and Bockscar planes tested nuclear payloads on it. Rusted mobile homes, cars up on blocks in the front yard, poorly maintained streets. So my friend came to me in July of 2004 and asked my help in coming up with a billboard to promote tourism to the Utah side of Wendover. I remembered Suresh's comment and created the following 14-foot high by 48-foot wide ad:
My buddy was so thoroughly horrified that he never even presented my idea to the Wendover city fathers. In fact, he didn't even ask me to come up with an alternative idea. Come to think of it, we haven't spoken more than 25 words to each other in the last 6 years. Was it something I said? Come to think of it, Wendover, UT probably wouldn't have wanted many Muslim visitors driving Yugos filled with explosives.

It is with great pleasure that I name the brilliant and profound Suresh Madhavan as my next Cyber Privateer Fantasy League team member.

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Implementation suggestions for THE MORGAN DOCTRINE are most welcome. What are the "Got'chas!"? What questions would some future Cyber Privateering Czar have to answer about this in a Senate confirmation hearing?