"With cellular telephony... we saw an enormous gap between what was and what should be. I mean, [the fixed phone system] makes absolutely no sense. It is machines dominating human beings. The idea that people went to a small cubicle, a six-by-ten office, and sat there all day at the end of a six-foot cord, was anathema to me" So says Craig McCaw, who staked what once amounted to $3.5 million dollars of long-term debt on the idea that in the not-too-distant future, America would be ready to cut that six-foot-cord... and whose epic risk paid off big in 1994 when AT&T bought for $12.6 billion the nationwide cellular-phone empire McCaw had for the past decade stealthily patched together, leveraged buyout by leveraged buyout. His story is told here by O. Casey Corr, who covers business and technology for The Seattle Times. Corr starts with the 1969 death of McCaw's broadcasting-tycoon father, whereupon Craig and his superrich Seattle family realize they are actually flat broke. At once risk-loving and shrewd, young Craig starts buying one small cable outfit after another in the Pacific Northwest as the fledgling industry picks up steam through the 1970s. But sensing the real wave of the future is the wireless phone, McCaw seizes on the FCC's mid-1980s decision to jettison its Byzantine application process for wireless regional franchises in favor of a lottery system--a move that transformed wireless speculation from a sleepy insider's game dominated by AT&T into a nationwide feeding frenzy, all at a time when cell phones and their transmission were still wildly expensive and their mass popularity more than a decade away. Leveraging one high-risk purchase against the next, eventually with the help of junk-bond king Michael Milken, McCaw gobbles up most of the infant markets. But he's smart enough to dodge his debt by selling off the entire thing to AT&T in 1994 for a dazzling $12.6 billion. He has since moved on to future-minded projects such as Teledesic, his $9 billion partnership with Bill Gates, Boeing, and Motorola to create what the book calls "an Internet in the sky, a satellite network that provides fast, cheap Internet access worldwide."
The dissolution and triumphant reconstruction of the McCaw family fortune is an intricate tale of shrewdly choreographed deals, and Corr tells it well, in an assured, crystal-clear and tautly paced entrepreneurial narrative. That said, Money from Thin Air does a better job of dissecting the technical minutiae of McCaw's empire-building than it does at dramatizing or interpreting the personalities or psyches of its main players, foremost McCaw. Corr tries hard to paint McCaw as another of those quirky, New Economy, redwood forest visionaries à la Bill Gates, full of complexities. But Corr fails at making much of a vivid character of McCraw or hitting the essence of what drives him to take such vertiginous risks. Perhaps that has to do with the one quality in his subject he seems to nail--McCaw's seeming desire to be as invisible (or, many of his employees would say, inaccessible) as possible. By Corr's own admission, McCaw agreed to all of two interviews for this book before he got bored and politely waved Corr away. You may not get caught up in the characters of Money from Thin Air, but you'll keenly follow McCaw as he profits his way across the frontier of an emerging telecommunications market. --Timothy Murphy
From Library Journal
Corr, a reporter with the Seattle Times and author of King: The Bullits of Seattle and Their Communications Empire, draws on interviews and published sources to produce a well-written account of Craig McCaw, the founder and CEO of McCaw Cellular Communications. As a youngster, McCaw was intelligent and introspective but suffered secretly from dyslexia. He shared his father's intuitiveness for "complex relationships and strategies," derived from their treasured games of chess. From his mother he learned how to be mindful of details and order. With these traits in hand, the enigmatic, reclusive maverick took over the reins of a family broadcasting company and turned it in a new direction. McCaw went on to create a nationwide cellular network, then sold his share to AT&T for billions at the age of 45. Not ready to retire, McCaw, who is considered a visionary with the ability to see the "big picture," is now quietly working with Bill Gates, Boeing, and Motorola to develop a new telecommunications empire that will be designed as a satellite network in order to provide fast, affordable Internet access. Corr ably blends McCaw's personal and professional stories, producing a major study of a key figure in today's business world. Highly recommended for business collections.DBellinda Wise, Nassau Community Coll. Lib., Garden City, NY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From the Inside Flap
ld to John D. Rockefeller to Bill Gates, the titans who change the world have set themselves apart by seizing the high ground before anyone else even knew it existed. Gutsy, shrewd, and ruthless, they were, above all, visionaries who saw whole new industries where others saw only chaos. Today, another visionary is seizing control of the vast new world of telecommunications, an elusive entrepreneur named Craig McCaw. Money from Thin Air is the story of how he created a new industry literally from thin air, and how he will do it again.
Journalist O. Casey Corr vividly portrays here for the first time how McCaw created a cellular communications empire from the disarray of his father's failed cable business and went on to sell it to AT&T in 1993 for a stunning $12.6 billion. And he shows how McCaw is now creating another new industry that could dwarf the accomplishments of Gates and Rockefeller put together, an "Internet in the Sky" that will provide high-speed data
About the Author
O. Casey Corr, a business and technology writer with the Seattle Times, is the author previously of KING: The Bullitts of Seattle and Their Communications Empire, and has contributed reporting and commentary to, among other publications, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Washington Post. He lives in Seattle with his wife, Sally Tonkin, and their two children, Evan and Michaela.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
More than any other individual alive, Craig McCaw embodies the incredible transformation and likely future of the telecommunications industry. He is one of the most fascinating executives in business today, an acknowledged visionary in communications, the billionaire whom even other billionaires find interesting.
This book's title refers to McCaw's long-term business focus: invisible airwaves that carry high-profit voice and data services. But it also suggests a deeper theme -- the managerial magic he brings to business. McCaw is astonishingly good at finding value where others see obstacles, doom, or just plain nothing. He seems to make money from thin air.
Describing himself as the master of the obvious, McCaw has redefined the idea of the executive. This is one guy rarely found in a suit, in the office, at a desk. More likely, he's kayaking, waterskiing, or piloting his jet high above the islands of British Columbia. When he talks about the freedom that wireless communications brings to the mobile worker, he knows it because he lives it. Contacting subordinates by voice mail, he is the virtual executive, more felt than seen. He makes money the new-fashioned way.
For the first eighty years of the twentieth century, people like McCaw had no place in telecommunications. The industry revolved around men in blue suits, white shirts, and sensible shoes who spent their lives inside a single gigantic company, AT&T, which resisted ideas that threatened its monopoly. Creative thinkers and quirky personalities worked elsewhere. Bill McGowan's MCI provided the notable exception, but the universe remained Ma Bell's until AT&T was broken up in 1984.
Today the telecom world is in turmoil. Giant companies are vulnerable because of their entrenchment in old technology and high cost. So they merge: Bigger must be better. At a different level, start-ups tap new pools of capital and maneuver to exploit opportunities created by stumbling giants and collapsing regulation. Everyone wants a share of the profit created by huge demand from businesses and consumers tapping the Internet. Increasingly, it's a game for the nimble and the daring. The telecommunications world has come around to Craig McCaw's way of business.
McCaw made one fortune in cable TV and another in cellular telephones. Now he's building a telecommunications empire of staggering potential through a collection of companies he controls: Teledesic, a satellite partnership with Microsoft's Bill Gates that is building a global "Internet in the Sky"; NEXTLINK, a company positioning itself to rival the Baby Bells with its own vast network of fiber-optic cable, wireless transmission services, and switching systems; CablePlus, a company that provides voice service, Internet access, and TV signals through coaxial cable; and Nextel, an international wireless telephone company with an expanding role in data services.
Each company is breathtaking in its ambition, hunger for capital, and risk-taking management style. Together, they provide a glimpse of McCaw's possible goal: one company capable of providing high-speed access to any point in the world, be it a cabin in the Cascade Mountains or a remote village in Asia. On the ground, a Teledesic community could also be served by a wireless network. For the Third World, that's the telecommunications equivalent of jumping from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first century. The idea has enormous social implications, and the potential for equally enormous profits.
Though this book focuses on McCaw, his story represents how the entrepreneur has moved from the fringes of the telecommunications business to the forefront. People such as McCaw, not the executives of major companies, have emerged as the visionaries who can adapt to a rapidly changing competitive landscape. They are the hunters, not the hunted. The management style and values they used to reach this point will be crucial in the future as the Internet fuels huge demand for sophisticated data services.
This book shows how McCaw's unique management style evolved by instinct and from periods of intense personal reflection and self-scrutiny. His emergence as a remarkable presence in global communications began with a crucial event in his youth.
