This class really has been quite an experience. The FAST team faced a number of struggles but managed to pull off high-quality work nonetheless. In the final weeks, members took responsibility for those tasks that were most important to them, with everyone juggling a number of time-consuming external commitments. Though work of higher-quality could have come from combined efforts on all fronts, this wasn’t realistic. Someone had to be responsible for getting the presentations together, and that person therefore shouldered most of the workload since organizing team meetings to do so was impossible. Another person accepted responsibility for getting the final report in shape to turn in, and did the lion’s share of work to accomplish that feat. While not ideal, we didn’t have the entire team at a meeting for the last month of the class, and had to work around that realization.

Some members will always contribute more than others. But what could have been done to better spread the work, and generally have a better functioning team? In Steve’s opinion, forming a team earlier in the term would have made a world of difference. During the first month of class, Steve and James had the chance to learn and understand the technology before other members joined. When the team was finally put together, everyone’s schedules were already crowded with other meetings and there was no time to meet as a group, even early on. We had two assignments due the week after the team was formed, leaving no time to get to know one-another personally or to catch up on background information. Having a geographically dispersed team didn’t allow us to make up for lost time, ultimately resulting in a somewhat dysfunctional team.

Though we spent some time reviewing the technology early on, there was insufficient time to do so. This situation was made considerably worst by the rapidly changing nature of the project. When we started, the market for FAST wasn’t clear. It was a semester-long project to decide where it fit in and to justify that decision. Therefore, markets and business strategy were fluid. Without being able to get together as a team to discuss these changes twice a week, in addition to time spent on assignments, there was a clear knowledge-gap between team members. This gap spiraled as questions came up in primary research that led to inventor involvement, further alienating some members of the team.

Had we all lived in close-proximity to one another, or had more designated meeting times, this team probably would have performed well. We have now experienced first-hand what can go wrong in a team, and learned a lot in the process. Most of the problems we faced were relatively small, but grew uncontrolled by lack of face-time or incompatible goals for the course. The chance to get a beer together even once a month would have gone a long way. In the end, Prof. Allen has provided us with an invaluable experience working in a strained environment that will surely benefit our future careers.

November 23 TOP

As we approach the final days of our feasibility study analysis, we are checking and finalizing our assumptions and our work.

Specifically, in the past week the Technology Scholars were able to enjoy a dinner with Drs. Allen and Pickar and share their thoughts on the semester and their involvement with both Caltech and Marshall MBA students. I (Frank) feel like I have learned a great deal this semester, both about how different people think in certain situations and about how entrepreneurial ventures are brought to market.

This past week we presented our elevator pitch to a receptive class and panel of judges. We felt as though the presentation was clean, smooth, and effective, but we received some comments regarding our financials. Given the limited time span of the presentation and the restrictions on presentation format, we were unable to delve as deeply as we might have into our financial assumptions. Nonetheless, we were happy to see some positive response, and took note of our shortcomings in order to correct them for future presentations. In particular, we are considering the effectiveness of our compelling story and of making our financial assumptions clear and formally presented within our final feasibility.

The group divided the remaining portions of the feasibility study into segments. The overall main focus was placed on certifying market data and quantifying demand figures. As mentioned above, we also decided to add some clearer customer matrixes. These matrixes will hopefully make our business model and our analysis much clearer to the reader. We have also spent a great deal of time on our business model – after speaking with Dr. Pickar, we decided to extend our model by several months to accommodate a slower technological “transfer” time to market.
We have also had to make specific decisions regarding the types of “boxes” (or hardware servers) we plan on implementing within this business model.

Due to team-members being forced to travel to make work-related interviews and other engagements, our team has not been able to meet much in person this past week. However, we have kept communication lines fluid and communicate several times a day (recently) via email and telephone. On a personal note, I agree with our most recent journal entry, which highlighted some organizational static created by a lack of communication between the team and the actual inventors/programmers of FAST. I would add to those comments by saying that this week (as the past few have been) was very hectic for all group members. Though I would have liked to, we were not able to meet in Pasadena to show any of the inventors the fruits of our semester-long project.
Unlike in past weeks, this week has seen no tension between group members’ expectations. The project and the feasibility have taken precedent and the group has streamlined its processes.

We have revised the previous mistakes of our first feasibility draft, and have focused on making our final feasibility smooth and fundamentally sound. We have compiled a list of several crtical success factors that we want to push out throughout the feasibility, and are working hard to make certain that our feasibility clearly conveys the group’s vision for FAST technology as applied to real-world markets.

In pure reflection, I feel that this semester has been more than I’d hoped for. I was expecting to meet new people and be placed in challenging situations in different environments, but I did not know whether I would fit in or not. I am glad that I was given the opportunity to take this class as I feel that I made some friends and gathered a great deal of real-world team working experience. I would love to pursue an MBA in the not-so-near future, and I am also grateful for the chance to experience the MBA curriculum in advance.

We feel that, looking back, the semester flew by and that a lot more work, time, energy, and dedication will be necessary to see FAST (and hopefully the group) reach its market goals/potential.

November 16 TOP

This is going to be my (James) last journal entry for the FAST project. Let me start by saying that I have learned the most from this project than any class that I have taken this term. It has been an incredible experience and I encourage anyone interested in technology and entrepreneurship to take this class. The key lessons I learned from this project is to never give up and the importance of team dynamics.

First of all, one of the most positive lessons that I have learned from this project is to never give up and that it is possible to solve a problem if we work hard at it. I remember in the beginning of this project, my biggest issue was trying to determine where FAST can be applied to solve a real world business problem. Even after three weeks of thinking and research, that question was not answered; it was probably the most difficult time as we did not know whether the project would lean toward feasibility or not. However, we did not give up. As our team kept on working, researching and talking with different people from industry, we slowly but surely, narrowed down to a need in the market. Thanks to the help of our Caltech team member who was able to attend a Storage Networking Conference and do much of the primary research legwork, we were finally able to determine how FAST would look like as a product, the exact business application it would solve, and its direct competitors. FAST has a lot of momentum right now and given the right team, resources, and environment, FAST is well on its way to becoming a successful company. One of the key lessons is that most ideas typically start off blurry but if you never give up and work hard at it, you will find an answer.

The second key lesson I learned is the importance of team dynamics. In our class last week, the Professor mentioned the importance of the team and that venture capitalists typically look at how the team functions before even looking at what company is about. The positive aspect is that our team consists of people from various backgrounds and with different skills sets. Unlike most business teams I’ve been involved in where everyone is an MBA student, our team consists of students from Caltech PhD, Marshall MBA, HKUST MBA, Marshall Undergrad and The Art Center. I can honestly say that this is the most diverse team that I have been a part of since starting my MBA program.

However, painting a rosy picture about the benefits of a diverse team is not what I intend to talk about here. To be honest, in the past 3-4 weeks, our team has faced a moral change. Although none of us want to admit it upfront, it is evident in our team meetings and conversations. Heated arguments are now the norm of every team meeting and resolving them has not been easy. Typically, at least one team member comes out of a team meeting feeling frustrated and unhappy. In fact, to resolve issues these days, we have had to ask the Professor about her opinions. Although this is ok in a class environment, it clearly shows that in the real world environment where there is no Professor, the team will face serious challenges in coming to an agreement. So how does this happen when the FAST concept is actually doing so well? This is a question that I have pondered myself and the best reasons that I have come up with is that our team members have different incentives.

Some are working on the project to solely to start a company while others are taking this class for pass/not pass. Although most of us came into the project hoping to see FAST become a company, we were not given the right incentives or resources. In my last journal about a month and a half ago, I stated that we needed to have more involvement and communication from the inventors but that has not been the case. We’ve had very little contact with the inventors and don’t really know about their goals. In fact, I am many times surprised at meetings when I hear information trickled down to me about what the inventors are doing. The truth is that there has been no equity agreement or any encouragement that some of us will be part of this company. I believe this incentive flaw contributes to the low moral we are facing. The different incentives also cause team members to spend different amounts of time on the project. Those who spend more time tend to feel they own more of the project and are unhappy that others don’t spend as much time as they do.

So the question is could we have solved some of these incentive and time commitment problems from the beginning? I believe we could have, but it would have taken involvement from the inventors. First, we needed to have both verbal and written agreements from the inventors as to their expectations of our team and our expectations of them. Second, the inventors needed to communicate with the entire team on a weekly basis so that they can appreciate our efforts and can help guide us toward a mutually agreeable direction. We did not have either of these. In fact, the trickle down information structure we have now has created a hierarchy that impedes full commitment from all members of the team.

It is always difficult to talk about things that don’t go well in the team. However, I hope that the team dynamics lessons learned from my team experience will help future teams.

November 10 TOP

The past week was fairly exciting for the FAST team. We are getting a clearer idea of our entry point, and an idea of what our first product will likely be. We believe it is best to offer FAST TCP installed on a server, as our product. A second, similar, product to be released shortly thereafter will contain a compression chip in that same box. There are a number of companies offering boxes that expedite delivery of content over WANs, but our core technology is friendlier than the competitors, and should work as well for many applications. A box removes the complications of operating system differences, Linux licensing difficulties and software integration.

We met with three lawyers from Allen Matkins law firm in LA. They were excited by our project and expressed considerable interest in working with us further. We are not ready to commit to anything, so we delayed another meeting until mid-January. By that time, we’ll have a better idea of where this is going and our law needs.

We also met with Kathy and Ken to go over our feasibility draft. Kathy’s comments were reasonable, and mostly minor. Rather than dwell upon the draft, we discussed the changes to our business concept that were brought about by Steve’s endeavor at Storage Networking World last week. He made a number of key contacts at major players and was able to bring first-hand information into our concept. Our draft was good, but much needs to be changed in order to accommodate our new entry point and list of competitors.

Everyone but Umang was able to meet at Art Center on Saturday to go over the business concept and delegate out work to be done by Tuesday. We have only one week before the elevator pitches, and only two weeks before the final feasibility is due. Time’s a wasting – we’ve got to get back to work.

November 2 TOP

This week’s entry will be fused with many personal happenings. My perspective on the project has been colored by a week that found me interviewing with eight firms, including two final rounds which lasted 5 hours apiece.

The havoc culminated last night when, having skipped my senior year homecoming in favor of a final round recruiting event at the Mondrian Hotel / Skybar, I found myself at home in the morning, minus my contact lenses, cell phone, ATM card, and $300 (the cab driver ripped me off).

Strolling out to go to my office, I hopped in my car and headed to the freeway. I heard a funny noise that intensified as I sped up, so I stopped by the side of the road to inspect the source of the strange vibrations. Apparently, sometime during the previous night, a fellow had endeavored to acquire my driver-side headlight (nothing fancy, definitely not xenon). When I stopped at the Santa Monica Sprint Store on the way to work, I was happily informed that the nationwide Sprint registration system was off-line – defeating any hope for a replacement cell phone.

As such, I have to say that this fresh batch of interviews was very helpful in getting me to practice my elevator speech. People always want to know what exactly I’m doing with Caltech Phds and Marshall MBAs. Practice makes perfect, and I have been practicing a great deal.

Tuesday’s meeting in place of regularly scheduled class was valuable in the sense that I got necessary feedback on my model and how it jibed with our stated business model. Being very much under the weather, I was frustrated at times by my inexperience in adequately explaining my assumptions and how our ideas had to fit into a technical format. But I reminded myself that this was exactly why I wanted to be in this program – to work with experienced people and to learn communications skills with people who aren’t bankers or financial mavens.

We went through the feasibility study line by line and, in anticipation of our professor meeting, allocated new tasks for each person to complete. What already existed was, for the most part, acceptable. But we determined that certain sections were actually altogether too brief – or in some cases, almost nonexistent. One key element we talked about shoring up is the competitor profile. We gave each group member a company to research and find specific types of information.

I think the group dynamic is good. We continually make sure that everyone is contributing their fair share and that the work is up to par. Stephen was not at the most recent meeting because he was making contacts at the convention in Florida. I will note, however, that we are all learning to work with people from different academic cultures. Business students and scientists have absolutely different mindsets when it comes to research and document production.

October 26 TOP

The first day of this week, Monday, has been the most eventful and productive day for us. We have achieved a great feat – an initial draft of our feasibility analysis, thanks to the rigorous deadline set by the course. Despite time pressure and constraints such as mid-term and varying schedules, we coordinated well as a team and managed to put all the discrete pieces of our study together. However, there was some excitement at the end as our resumes were in different formats and we only had one hour left to submit the draft. But we again pulled through and finally submitted the assignment. It was quite satisfying to see our work shape up well in the draft and we realized that our long arguments and long nights have borne fruit. By applying industry frameworks and feasibility tips given during the class, we were able to methodically conclude the target market for FAST and come up with a reasonable entry strategy.

For a change, the latter part of the week has been comparatively quiet for us. After submitting the assignment on Tuesday, we did not have our normal evening meeting and pizza as some people had to prepare for mid-term or other work. However, we decided that we would work on the initial draft on our own and find out the gaps and revisions required before the team’s scheduled meeting with Kathy on Tuesday. Therefore, we have started working on the draft scrupulously and diligently.

In order to be efficient and effective, we have also divided various tasks while Steve has headed up for the Storage Networking World Conference in Orlando Florida in the search for Waldo. Umang is continuing secondary research, finding support for the questions of our survey as well as other relevant information (e.g. size of disaster recovery and remote backup markets, market leaders, other market information, total bandwidth use by companies, amount spent on bandwidth, infrastructure capacity, length of bandwidth contracts, etc). James is also going through the feasibility study, identifying problem areas and working to resolve the issue. Frank and Jonathan are going to walk around downtown again for primary research. Jonathan is also continuing to improve the financials, by creating a parameter page making it easier for the team to do sensitivity analysis. And last but not the least, Forrest is designing starter logos and name ideas to throw around and go over with the scientist Steven Low. All of us are also going to use our contacts and get as much feedback as possible from the market.

This week, we also delivered our business concept and elevating pitch in front of the class. As a result, we got valuable feedback to make our pitch more clear, concise and relevant to the business concept. That is certainly one of the most important items of our to-do agenda now.

While doing all these tasks, we have to keep our mentor Chris Halliwell posted about our progress. During our last meeting with her, we had decided various action items, which we have implemented. Now, we need to get her input upon our draft and the research and decide upon further strategies. We plan to have a meeting with Chris once Steve returns from the conference next week.

October 19 TOP

Over the past few weeks, the team has been moving forward with the feasibility deliverables, making contacts, and refining our vision. Steve and Forrest have been trying to prepare for the conference - focusing on how we would present our concept to potential customers, most specifically... to find Waldo. Forrest created the two-page PDF file about two weeks ago, but work continues to refine it. The goal was to not only convey our business concept with clarity and compelling information, but also to establish a sense of professionalism and credibility. The flier will essentially be our promotional tool, and in terms of marketing, it will potentially attract Waldo to us. Of course, this would not substitute networking and interviewing "decision-makers" in IT of different companies (potential partners), but it serves as a "bait" to hopefully find Waldo. The flier will be printed before next week, so that Steve will be able to refer to it at the conference.

Based on Chris Halliwell's guidance, we clarified our engineering, marketing, and business assumptions so that we may validate or eliminate them during our contacts and interviews. The survey/questionnaire is still a draft, since it needs to be more concise and edited down, but we are moving forward.

Steve and the team discussed our market and business assumptions with a Senior Product Marketing Engineer at Intel. This individual is largely responsible for screening technologies that Intel might adopt. Our discussion couldn’t have been much more informative or positive. We may have found Waldo at Intel. The search for Waldo at other companies, including Veritas, IBM and HP, continues.

An exciting news to share is that we have been getting some exposure through CNN.com and Yahoo.com. There is an article on this team's technology. It states that a new world speed record for sending data across the Internet had been set, equivalent to transferring a full-length DVD film in seven seconds.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/10/15/internet.speed.reut/index.html

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=575&e=10&u=/nm/internet_speed_dc

October 12 TOP

The focus of the last week has been on compiling industry and market data, and in so doing to specifically segment our identified target market. Based on our previous primary research, mainly though face-to-face interviews and phone calls, our team continues to see the storage-backup industry as the primary market for the adoption of FAST TCP.

Team members were assigned different positions for the last week. We were able to research the largest, most relevant financial firms to determine what ratio of revenue is reinvested as information-technology (IT) expenses. This information is useful in understanding how these firms relate to IT, how important efficient IT is on their list of operations priorities. We are working on data to go towards our market segmentation; graphs and figures will tell us which segment to target first, and which to expect the best response from. The last week saw our group making progress in contacting industry representatives. For example, we were able to speak with several executives with whom we were able to validate some of our assumptions. This work is invaluable to our group’s success because these conversations allow our group to take the industry’s pulse. Steve will travel to Florida to represent our group at a 5-day conference on IT, at which he hopes to contact several decision-makers and early adopters who might be willing to accept (or talk about accepting) a beta-version of FAST in the next several months. Finally, our group is striving to arrange a meeting with a high-level Microsoft executive who could potentially act as a partner-investor, if not a direct customer. We want to be confident in our work so that we can approach our “waldo.” While concluding a report on the wi-fi (wireless) applications of FAST, we have determined that the market does not seem ripe. Still, we believe that much of FAST’s future lies in wireless applications. This research underscores our previous industry assumptions and will help in compiling the feasibility study.

The most important aspect of the past week has been focused on a list of assumptions we are making - and upon which we are basing our business model. Chris Halliwell has been a great resource as she has advised us on how to approach industry members. It was at her suggestion that we examined our own assumptions: assumptions about market needs, application of the technology, and assumptions about our own business plan. These assumptions will be validated by our continuing discussion with industry members, such as contacts at Bank of America’s IT department (downtown). Another useful source of primary research might be the magazine Network World, or the USC Information Services Department (ISD). We are developing a survey with Chris’ help and would like to submit it through these mediums. We were able to meet with Chris last Thursday over a three-way conference call. Team members were located at USC and Cal-Tech, with Chris calling in from home. She has undoubtedly been an immense asset in planning and has helped tremendously in forming our business-strategy.

Team dynamics are strong. Meetings always run smoothly, and members genuinely like each other. On Saturday we all met at Steve’s house in Altadena for a meeting before the football game against Stanford. Cheng Jin, one of the Cal-Tech scientists/students developing FAST, was present at the meeting. The meeting proved to be very useful to discuss some assumptions about FAST’s ease-of-application. Could we apply it to different, new forms of TCP/IP? Yes. What do companies currently use to maximize their bandwidth? Cheng told us that some firms invest a great deal into hardware products, but that they were bulky and difficult to implement. This raised an interesting question about our distribution strategy, and was added to our list of assumptions. Should we package some hardware along with our software in order to connect ourselves to our customers?

Working with this group has been a great team experience. Members are considerate, responsible, experiences and knowledgeable. The general optimism and dedicated passion to the team’s success in class, and most importantly, in the business world is contagious.

We have attempted to address the lag between the team and the scientists, mainly by setting up a meeting with Cheng when possible. The coming week will hopefully see our hard work come together as our feasibility draft coalesces.

October 5 TOP

This week was in important week for our team as we started focusing on the feasibility deliverable that is due in a few weeks. Although we have been working on the project for quite some time since the beginning of class, all of us kept an open mind in terms of looking at various opportunities. Our actions for the prior weeks can be categorized as looking like a spokes on a wheel. We wanted to make sure that we examined all the possibilities before we decided to focus in one or two directions. Several of our team members conducted informal primary interviews to find out where the need for FAST exists in various different companies. From those interviews we narrowed down our focus to the backup and storage area networks. This was a significant achievement and milestone for our project. For some time, a few team members had some doubts about how FAST can be directly applied to solve a real world business problem. We knew that the FAST technology looked great on paper, but the business problem eluded us. Now as our focus has narrowed on the backup and storage markets, we are starting to see more and more potential for FAST. This has also increased the moral of our team.

Other developments this week included the creation of a short PowerPoint presentation, a 2 page summary of FAST and a questionnaire template. We realized that as we contacted various companies for our primary research, we ran into the problem of consistently explain what FAST does and how it can help the company. We wanted something at the 30,000 feet level that someone at a company can understand. Afterwards, we can drill down when we actually interview them. The presentation served that purpose. We also created a two-page summary of FAST which goes into a bit more detail than our presentation. Both the presentation and the two-pager will help prep the company before we conduct our in-depth interviews. Another reason for creating the presentation and two-pager is that we can easily send these to our potential primary contacts and if there is no interest, we can save some time trying to set-up an interview. Additionally, the questionnaire template created a consistent set of questions so that we can easily compare and analyze the responses we received.

Our team dynamics are great. We have our usual discussions and disagreements among members of our team, but we always come together in the end where everyone agrees with the action plan we set. This is due largely to the part that everyone on the team understands that disagreements are OK, but keeping an open mind is even more important. We also added a Forrest from the Art Center to our team and he helped us create a very professional looking two-pager document. Also, Chris Halliwell from Caltech will be advising and mentoring us on the marketing aspect of our project. We are extremely excited to have someone of her caliber to help us on our project.

A couple of things we’d like to see more of in the coming weeks include more involvement and input from the scientists who developed the project. It is vital that the team members get up to date information on news from the scientist side as well as to update the scientists on the new developments from the feasibility project. Currently, the information is lagged. This process needs to be improved.

Last but not least, the major development news of the week: Steve just got a free pass to the Storage Networking World Conference in Orlando Florida. His goal there is to find Waldo!

September 28 TOP

We were only able to meet once this week since most members of the team were out of town this weekend, including Friday. And we were not all able to meet at once since Umang has to catch a bus home at 8pm and Frank had a meeting after class until about 8:30pm. Our meeting was productive though somewhat disorganized. It is difficult to split up work and organize plans without getting everyone together at once. Nonetheless, we learned more about each other’s backgrounds and strengths and split up markets along those lines. Our goal this week was to feel out various markets through both primary and secondary sources, so we can decide next week where we should do more in-depth research.

We believe that FAST will find application in data backup systems and storage-area-networks (SANs). Backup involves a limited number of nodes transferring a large amount of data continuously, and FAST should excel under these conditions. We are trying to determine the exact manner in which data is stored and retrieved in typical industry networks. Banks and other financial institutions must keep continuous backup records of all transactions, and are thus large users of backup systems. Frank and Jonathan are exploring their network contacts in this area. Jonathan found that Citigroup uses Iron Mountain for backing up their information. We will try to speak with someone at Iron Mountain to understand the limitations of their networks and operations.

James and Umang went to a USC Alumni networking event in the Bay Area this weekend. They each made a number of useful contacts. James spoke with an alumnus at Veritas, a backup solutions company, and hopes to be referred to someone who reports directly to the CIO. James also spoke with individuals from Cisco and Intel, as well as network administrators. These meetings are giving us a variety of perspectives and are helping to lay the groundwork for the specific market analysis we are beginning.

Umang has been focusing on the Wi-Fi market, and managed to talk to employees of Nokia, Sony and Broadcom over the weekend. His initial impression is that bandwidth is not a significant problem in WLAN and therefore FAST may not solve a significant pain in this area. Umang has a number of contacts to follow up with to create a broad analysis of this sector and decide if his time is best spent on another market.

Steve spoke with a field sales engineer from Intel on Friday. Eventually, FAST will probably be encoded on a chip that would be sold to Intel or 3Com and included on their networking cards. The value chain in this case is significantly longer than in the situation where FAST is simply software to be installed on individual servers. Also, a hardware implementation will require significant testing to ensure compatibility with all operating systems and other devises, but FAST on a chip would operate more efficiently than a software version.

We are making progress in identifying markets and making contacts within those markets. Thus far, we split up the work by market and only have a general idea of what information we need for each market. Our customer plan is being developed and will be completed before class on Tuesday. It’s important for us to be consistent through all of our interviews, to present a coherent case in the feasibility report. Our next team meeting will be more organized (Steve will send out an agenda, and a scribe will be designated) now that we are ready for more than a brainstorming session. We also want to put together a one- or two-page document making a case for why customers should buy FAST.

We are finding marketing to be quite technical, and that in only one week it has been difficult for team members to understand the technology well enough to answer concerns that were brought up by interviewees. Putting together a summary document should raise questions and allow us to discuss many unclear technical areas. Our understanding is complicated by the state of the technology – it has been tested only under protected conditions, so it is unclear exactly how it will perform in real-life tests. Of course, potential customers want to know how it will perform under their network conditions. Playing up the fact that we are students taking a class on marketing should help us get out of these situations, but it would be nice to know more about it’s performance. This is probably always the case.

September 21 TOP

We are now entering the fourth week of class and finally have the FAST team together. We are a team of five, excited to prove that FAST is going to revolutionize the way networks (including the Internet) are used. In our only team meeting, it was apparent that we are united in our belief in this technology and that this will be a very productive semester.

Since this is our first journal entry, we’d like to introduce the technology we are all so energized about. FAST is a software-based network solution that reduces the cost of bandwidth operations while increasing data transfer rate, and is particularly applicable to high-volume data transmissions on the Internet. FAST is easily installed by the customer from a compact disk or Internet download.

To allow you, the reader, to better understand our future group dynamic, we’d like to introduce ourselves, discuss our personal motivation for working on FAST and give our personal outlook on this project, at its inception.

Umang Doctor: I am looking to gain practical experience on the processes and issues involved in technology licensing and commercialization while evaluating an entrepreneurial opportunity. FAST shows tremendous potential in resolving the bandwidth and speed constraints faced by networks all over the world. Thus far, the group dynamic is positive and the team has a diversity of experience that is reflected in interesting and argumentative group discussions. My one concern is time availability as we have just started the discussions. However, as the team seems to be committed and hard-working, I hope that it will not remain an issue after a few weeks.

James Hsu: I've always been interested in technology and how it can be used to help mankind (the reason why I majored in engineering as an undergrad). Now, as a business student, I've realized that making business sense out of a myriad of innovative
technologies is one the most difficult tasks to accomplish. My hope is that the experience and knowledge gained from the technology feasibility class will sharpen my senses when I run across potential opportunities in the future. I chose FAST because I thought the technology could be applied to a wide array of markets. Additionally, it seemed that the product wasn't defined so I thought it would be a valuable experience to come up with product ideas that could target high revenue and growth markets. So far, I think we have a great team consisting of dedicated, knowledgeable people from various backgrounds. It's important that we keep the communications open, express our concerns and not bottle our opinions. I've always believed that if you work hard and smart at something, you will be rewarded in the end.

Jonathan Fung: I am taking this class as part of the Undergraduate Technology Scholars Program. I am interested in new technology ventures from a Venture Capital perspective. What most attracted me to this class was the opportunity to work with Caltech and Marshall graduate students on commercializing real technologies. FAST interests me in its broad and observed applicability. We are constantly moving towards a greater need for bandwidth efficiency and this technology helps to satisfy that distinct demand. Based on limited interactions, we appear to be interacting and communicating fairly well as a group. My hope is that we remain communicative and flexible with each other. I look forward to a great semester working with this team.

Frank Torresy: I was interested in this class as a Technology Scholar because of the extraordinary exposure it offers. I am looking forward to working with graduate students and scientists in a new environment. I am especially excited by the chance to help bring a technology to market; I am sure to learn a great deal about the entrepreneurial spirit and the dedication to be successful. FAST will undoubtedly change the way much of the e-commerce world operates in the benefits it can bring to transaction efficiency. Because FAST is several times faster than regular TCP connections, businesses will be able to gather and backup data many times faster than before. Overall, FAST has the definite potential to make an impact on the world of technology and telecommunications that I’ve grown up with and have grown to depend on. The FAST team has impressed me with its cohesive vision and dedication to the technology and to each other. We have a driven, professional, and respectful atmosphere in which to operate – and the general cohesiveness of the team is evident in the smoothness of meetings. I’m glad to be working with this team of businessmen, scientists, and students.

Steve Popielarski: As a Ph.D. candidate at Caltech, I have been wholly immersed in science and technology for the past four years. In viewing the world around me, it has increasingly become apparent that social change requires much more than technological achievement. My desire to change the world has thus led me into the realm of business and entrepreneurship. FAST is a remarkable technology that promises to change the way internets are used. I consider it my social responsibility to allow society to reap the benefits of FAST, while it is my professional responsibility to deploy FAST in such a manner as to allow the inventors and business team to benefit personally from its success. I am attracted to the unprecedented business strategy surrounding FAST (TCP has been the Internet protocol since the early days of the Internet) and the enormous upside potential of this technology on the bottom line of the startup built around it. The FAST team is strong. We had a great team meeting last Friday, in which many arguments were considered and conclusions were reached. Debate was professional and productive, which will make us a much stronger team in the end. This is going to be an exciting semester.

We were all pleased with our initial group meeting. The atmosphere was challenging and dynamic, but always respectful and positive. Our various backgrounds and personalities prevented anyone from making a point without supporting it. We believe that this is the most appropriate environment to achieve great results, and we welcome lively debate. Our 90-minute meeting was extremely productive and quickly got our project underway.

We are currently working on our business concept and initial justification. FAST is applicable to all users of the Internet, the world over. It is our primary challenge to prioritize available markets and understand the needs of the principal ones. This is going to be an exciting semester. Stay tuned…