Insight
Canion: Founding a company gives no inherent right to run it
“And just because you started the company doesn't give you any right to continue to run the company. You know, it needs to be run by somebody that can make good decisions and can manage that complex an operation.”
Disclosure
Compaq stockpiled inventory instead of doing layoffs when IBM attacked
“We're going to keep building these things. We're going to store them and wait for the orders to come. If the orders never come, yeah, we're in deep trouble, but you know what? We're in deep trouble anyway if the orders don't come.”
Insight
Canion: Founding a company gives no right to keep running it
“And just because you started the company doesn't give you any right to continue to run the company. You know, it needs to be run by somebody that can make good decisions and can manage that complex and operation”
What-if
Canion says Compaq would never have sold to HP under his leadership
“The leaders of those companies maintained enough control to make sure that it never got into the hands of somebody that looked at it just purely from a financial standpoint. If I had been there, if I had been leading the company, we would never have sold. We w…”
Insight
Canion now attributes 90% of Compaq's massive success to pure luck
“If you had asked me that in the eighties, let's say the late eighties, I would probably have said it was 90% intelligence and insight and work and 10% luck. But to tell you how perspective changes with time, I would say today it was the other way around.”
Assertion Supported
Canion: Compaq legally reverse-engineered IBM's ROM without infringing patents
“You know, we had reverse engineered the ROM following advice from top notch intellectual property lawyers. So we were very careful around that. Their product was not protected by patents in any other way.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Canion: Unsold Compaq computers filled 20 tractor trailers across Houston in 1984
“When that filled up, we borrowed space in friends' parking lots around the town, and by mid-February, we had about 20 of these trailers full of computers sitting around Houston.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Canion: Compaq outsold the IBM Portable eight to one in 1984
“I think by the end of the year, we were outselling it, ah, seven or eight to one.”
What-if
Canion: Compaq would never have sold to HP if I led it
“If I had been there, if I had been leading the company, we would never have sold. We would have figured out a way to solve the problem.”
Assertion Supported
The original IBM PC was unprotected and legally reverse-engineered by Compaq
“And I knew that the IBM PC Was relatively unprotected. It would be a challenge, but it could be reverse engineered legally, and we could make our computer run the same software.”
Assertion Supported
By late 1984, Compaq outsold IBM's competing portable computer 7-to-1
“I think by the end of the year, we were outselling it seven or eight to one.”
Assertion Supported
A fierce disagreement over Asian outsourcing led to Rod Canion's ouster
“The chairman of the company, Ben Rosen, thought we ought to move very quickly and so quickly that, in fact, we ought to go buy a product from a Taiwanese or a Japanese or a Korean supplier. And my argument was, look, it's not what it seems. We can get to marke…”
Assertion Supported
Canion: Compaq generated $111 million in sales in its first year
“We sold one hundred and eleven million dollars worth of compact computers.”
Assertion Supported
Canion: Compaq tripled revenue to $329 million in its second year
“And, ah, we tripled to three hundred and twenty-nine million in our second year.”
What-if
Canion: IBM could have easily put early Compaq out of business
“They could have easily put us out of business if they had come out with a real comparable product.”
Assertion Supported
Canion: Compaq doubled sales to $1.2B with desktop 3x faster than IBM
“The thing that took us from six hundred million in 86 to 1.2 billion in sales in 87, we came out with our own desktop, which was, ah, essentially three times faster than IBM's desktop for about the same price and began to establish ourselves as not only the po…”
Assertion Supported
Canion: Ben Rosen wanted Compaq to outsource low-cost PCs to Asia
“The chairman of the company, Ben Rosen, thought we ought to move very quickly and so quickly that, in fact, we ought to go buy a product from a Taiwanese or a Japanese or a Korean supplier. And my argument was, look, it's not what it seems. We can get to marke…”
Opinion
Canion: Compaq's success was 90% luck and 10% hard work
“If you had asked me that in the eighties, let's say the late eighties, I would probably have said it was 90% intelligence and insight and work and 10% luck. But to tell you how perspective changes with time, I would say today it was the other way around.”
What-if
Canion admits IBM could have easily put Compaq out of business
“IBM maybe underestimated us. They didn't really study what had made our product successful. They could have easily put us out of business if they had come out with a real comparable product.”
Assertion Contradicted
IBM's 1987 PS/2 computer launched without running any existing PC software
“Because this thing not only didn't run all the software, it didn't run any of the software.”
Disclosure
Severe burnout led Rod Canion to subconsciously guide his own firing
“I guess under the stress I was under and kind of gotten into this frame of mind where I need to get away, the disagreement over the low-cost speed to market was just the catalyst that, that allowed it to happen. I almost guided it to the point where I was goin…”
Insight
Canion: Silicon Valley founders were not smarter, they just took action
“One of the First things we realized is, gee, these guys are having fun, they're making a ton of money, and, you know, they're not any smarter than we are. They just, they're just out doing it themselves.”
Assertion Supported
Canion: Early PC brands each required separate versions of popular software
“Every different brand of computer had to have its own version of the popular software programs.”
Disclosure
Canion: Kleiner Perkins agreed to fund Compaq a week after pitching Doerr
“We went in to, ah, meet with John Doerr, and we spent a good morning, probably three or four hours, being questioned, and sure enough, ah, about a week later, ah, we got a call that they were willing to invest, and so it was a go.”
