JMA:1990-1995

So, while I was working at ADAPTIVE, I had built a relationship with a company called Highland Digital.  Highland was a Value Added Reseller for Sun Microsystems.  We used mostly Sun equipment on our network and bought a lot of disk drives, systems and other equipment from Highland.  My main contact at Highland was a gent by the name of Mike Lash.  He was a sales guy extraordinaire in Silicon Valley.  One day, while working away at ADAPTIVE, I called Mike and asked him what networking consultants made per hour.  He replied, "About $120.00 per hour".  I did some quick math (is 120 > 10?) and decided to start Wizard Computers to do consulting on the side to see how it went.  Mike sent me to visit a nice gentleman by the name of John VanValer of a company called Cornerstone Research (www.cornerstone.com).  I helped them with their Sun network.  Miraculously, they paid me $120.00 per hour for my time.  Mike, and other sales people at Highland, sent me to dozens of other companies to help them out.  I realized after the laughs from the first few customers (and the sales staff at Highland) that Wizard Computers was a bad name and thus came the very creative name of John Mayes and Associates (JMA).  Probably the 10th company that I consulted for was called Credence Test Systems.  I worked for a man named Peter Nelson and Monty Waite.  They were great guys and offered to have me work for a fixed number of hours per week for several months at a reduced rate of $85.00 per hour.  With this, I would be making more than my salary at ADAPTIVE, so I gave my notice.  I remember having an exit lunch with Audrey MacLean and her telling me that being a consultant was hard work.  She drew a C on a napkin and asked me if I knew what that meant.  I replied "Consultant".  She said, "No, the C stands for Commitment.  You must be committed to your clients".  I took that, along with all the other great tools from ADAPTIVE and Brantley, to go forth and take care of my customers.

JMA

Sometime in early 1992, I ended up consulting for a company that would change my life forever.  Highland Digital sent me to HaL Computer Systems.  HaL had a great crew of engineers and, even though I was a consultant, I felt like I was part of the team.  I worked day and night with them analyzing their network and helping to grow it to meet their engineering and simulation requirements.  I made the acquaintance of one Mr. Johnson Wu.  Johnson was a USF (he called it the University of Sexual Frustration) Business School graduate who ended up (like Brantley) following the path of computing instead of what he studied (thank goodness for me again!).  Johnson was a jack of all trades and master of all.  He was a self-proclaimed "Furniture Mover" who supported the PC side of the HaL network.  JMA ended up being a loose knit bunch of engineers.  I would work with customers who lacked my skills, but had employees with skills I didn't have.  So, along the way, a new customer would ask for help with a certain system that I didn't know, so I would ask someone from one of my other companies to help.  They would join the band of Associates at JMA.  Well, the PC/DOS/Windows world is an area that I purposefully stayed clear of (Sorry Mr. Gates).  Johnson, on the other hand, thrived in this world of chaos.  So, when my clients needed PC help, I immediately asked Johnson.  After we worked together a while, I realized that Johnson had great skills and the the same great customer service ethic that I had.  So, after quite some time moonlighting with me while working at HaL, he joined JMA full time and we were the John and Johnson show.  We used other Associates from time to time, but it was 90% just he and I.

JMA HQ 1990-1993

705 Lakeview Way

Redwood City, CA

Photo by Michelle Titus

John at JMA HQ c. 1992

What are all those things in his pockets?

Photo probably by Richard Clark

Johnson at NTI

These hands are deadly weapons

1901 Embarcadero Way

Palo Alto, CA

Photo by Richard Clark

JMA

While at HaL one day, the CEO, Andrew Heller, called me into his office.  I was wondering what was up.  He asked me, "Hey John, I hear you have a Mooney (airplane)" in his booming operatic  voice.  We immediately hit if off like any two pilots in a room do.  He had a Baron B-58 twin engine airplane.  So, Andrew and I became friends as technology guys and as pilots.  I worked very hard at HaL.  Andrew and I would sit around his office shooting the bull about airplanes and life.  He had me out to his ranch (another long story) and we built a friendship that would help me greatly in the next chapter.

JMA

In 1994, Richard Clark was working at Kit's Cameras in the Stanford Shopping Center as a store manager.  He and I were best friends since 1983 from the days of the Chico State Flying Club.  JMA was going great guns (heh) and I needed some administrative help.  Since Richard was "The Secretary" of the Chico State Flying Club, it was only logical that he could be the Secretary at JMA also!  So, Richard would stay at our then spacious (but very spartan) offices at 1901 Embarcadero Way on the Palo Alto Airport and run the back office of JMA.  He was a dear friend and dedicated worker.  He allowed Johnson and I to dedicate our time to our customers while bringing organization and a lot of fun to our office.

Andrew Heller in Baron c. 1993

Departing Hell'er High Water Airport

Zenia, CA

Photo by Richard Clark

Andrew Heller c. 1993

Hell'er High Water Ranch

Zenia, CA

Photo by Richard Clark

John Mayes c. 1993

Hell'er High Water Ranch

Zenia, CA

Photo by John Gmuender

John Gmuender (l) and Andrew Heller (r) c. 1993

Hell'er High Water Ranch

Zenia, CA

Photo by John Mayes

JMA

JMA's business strategy was this: Do great work and every customer will be a reference.  In order to get customers in the first place, we used referrals from Highland Digital primarily.  I (and Richard Clark, if I recall) were both early customers of a company called NETCOM Services which was run by a gentleman named Bob Reiger.  NETCOM was one of the earliest ISPs and was selling services for dial-up and leased line services to businesses.  I met with Bob to see if he could refer customers to me as well.  As it turned out, there were a lot of businesses out there hooking up to the Internet at this time, so I got a great flow of customers from them.  I ended up becoming a part of the NETCOM family pretty quickly.  Shannon McElyea, Joe Haar, Viren Singh and Melissa Opel helped out JMA a lot with new customers.  The whole Netcom team ended up helping NTI down the road also, Shannon so much that we made her an honorary part of the NTI team.

JMA

In 1994, JMA was a booming business.  If memory serves me, we had between 200 and 300 customers and had put almost 150 organizations on the Internet.  JMA went from a pure consulting organization to a company with a consulting product: the JMA Firewall.  The JMA Firewall was built typically using a Livingston Portmaster router and a Sun SparcStation UNIX workstation.  We would go to each customer and configure the router to protect the network, then use the Sun as the gateway for services on the network like email, news, etc.  We would charge $10,000 for our time and would typically install this in 1-2 days of time.  It was a good business, but it required us to be on site at each and every customer.

As we were out installing these firewall systems at all these companies, we kept running across the same problem over and over.  About one third or more of our customers had unregistered IP addresses.  These were addresses that could be used inside their company network, but could not be used on the Internet.  For most of these companies, there was no good solution.  For small organizations (with about 250 computers), we would send in the JMA Weekend Team to change their IP addresses.  We would arrive with about 6 people, shut down their network at 5:00 on Friday afternoon and get to work changing every PC, workstation, server, printer, router, hub and anything else we could find with an IP address.  We would work 24 hours per day non-stop until Monday at 8:00 in the morning when everyone would return to work.  We would fix the last few things until about noon, then leave them to it.  We could then return to the company later and do the JMA Firewall installation.  Johnson and I got a contract to get a company called Centigram on the Internet in early 1994.  It was for a network of a couple of hundred HP workstations and a dial-up connection to Netcom.  The guy we were working for gave us a set of 3 class C addresses (254 address blocks) to use for their network.  We did the usual JMA Weekend Team project and when we started to spin up the connection, Jay Adelson (Netcom’s main sysadmin dude) called us up to ask what we were doing.  It turned out the addresses were from the HP Server Manual (unregistered IP addresses), not from Netcom as we had been told.  Customer experiences like this frustrated us continuously.  Of course, if you had a larger network, addresses were typically not available in big enough blocks and it was impractical to change all the machines.  Many of our customers had thousands (even 20,000) computers, so they were out of luck.  I never like telling customers that I can’t help them.  This gnawed at me for a long time.

So, one morning in the shower of 705 Lakeview Way, a few days after the Centigram experience, I had an idea...

Richard Clark c. 1994

Kit’s Cameras

Stanford Shopping Center

Palo Alto, CA

Photo probably by John Mayes

Shannon McElyea at KPAO c. 1995

Slim is in the background

Photo by Richard Clark

Richard Clark c. 1994

Working on a tough problem at JMA - 705 Lakeview Way

Photo by John Mayes no doubt

John’s desk at JMA - 1993

705 Lakeview Way

Photo by John Mayes