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By Ramin Farjad Rad, Ph.D.

SiliconIran plans to review and publicize annually the most successful high-tech companies in the world who have made it to the top of their class as a result of the extraordinary leadership by the visionary Iranian-born entrepreneurs. This issue of SiliconIran covers the success story of seven of these technology leaders whose exceptional performance in their field have resulted in five of the major high-tech acquisitions in the United States in the recent years. The size of these acquisitions ranges from a couple of hundred million dollars to tens of billion dollars. Some of these companies have broken industry records by developing technologies that were believed to be impossible at the time of their inception. The following have been known as the fastest growing companies in terms of value and development.

Mory Ejabat
Mory was born in March of 1950 in the city of Tehran, Iran. At the age of 20, he immigrated to US to continue his studies in systems engineering at California State University at Northridge, where he received his BS and MS in the field of Industrial Engineering (IE). He also received a MBA from Pepperdine University at Malibu. In one of his earlier jobs, Ejabat as the vice president for wide area communications products at Micom Systems, Inc. was in charge of the total P&L responsibility for the WAN product line. Ejabat joined Ascend in 1990 as vice president of operations, assuming increasingly strategic roles within the company during his career there. Ascend was the leader in wide area network (WAN) solutions for providers and users of the Public Network. He then served as president, CEO, and director of Ascend before its IPO in 1995. Under Ejabat's leadership, Ascend's annual sales grew from $40 million to nearly $2.3 billion in just over five years, with an increase in personnel from less than 100 to more than 3,000 full-time employees by the end of 1998. Ascend's business success was achieved both through organic growth and strategic acquisitions, the most notable being the $3.7 billion purchase of Cascade Communications in 1997 and of Stratus Computer Corporation in 1998. Mory sold Ascend Communications Inc. to Lucent Technologies for $24 billion in 1999. Mory Ejabat is currently the chairman and CEO of Zhone Technologies, Inc. Zhone is a newly formed company pioneering the development of next-generation communications equipment to enable carriers and service providers to cost effectively offer high-bandwidth services independently of the existing local loop communications infrastructure.

Ascend Communications was a top maker of digital switches and networking products for WANs (Wide area networks). Its product line included switches, routers, and remote-access tools. Ascend developed architecture for Internet-based communications, and ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) and frame relay networks, which enable high-speed networking connections. A leader in data networking technology, the company was acquired to help telecom equipment giant Lucent Technologies compete with networking equipment king Cisco Systems in the data and voice transmission market. Ascend is now part of Lucent's InterNetworking Systems unit. Formerly based in Alameda, California, Ascend's last reported sales were $1.48 billion in fiscal 1998. Ascend was a leader in the small but growing market for frame relay equipment and remote-access concentrators (network on-ramps that combine many modems). Its rapid growth came from tailoring products to Internet service providers (ISPs), including UUNET, and telecom companies, including AT&T and British Telecommunications. Ascend was founded in 1989 by Robert Ryan and three former employees of Hayes Microcomputer to build connecting devices for ISDN phone lines. It launched its first line of multimedia access products in 1991, and debuted a WAN access switch suite one year later. Ascend went public in 1994. Ascend extended its product lines through acquisitions. It purchased NetStar (high-speed computer switches) and Morning Star Technologies (Internet security) in 1996, and high-speed switching specialist Whitetree and ISP software firm InterCon Systems the following year. Ascend also bought Cascade Communications, a top maker of WAN switches, in a $3.7 billion deal that gave Ascend a presence in the thriving transmission gear market. But troubles in assimilating Cascade, price wars in the access concentrator arena, and a roller-coaster stock ride that had analysts squabbling about the company's prospects, led to losses in 1997. Losses rose when Ascend opted to match 3Com's modem software giveaway by upgrading 770,000 modems with new hardware and software. In 1998 Ascend bought Stratus Computer in an $822 million deal, forming a new division to focus on telecommunications. In early 1999 Lucent set in motion its plans to buy the company, sparking lawsuits by Ascend shareholders seeking to block the purchase. The acquisition, valued at $24 billion, was completed that June.

Farid Dibachi & Farzad Dibachi
The Dibachi brothers have been a good example of successful serial entrepreneurs since early 90's in the bay area, where they implemented their novel ideas in different ventures they created and led them to success. After completing his M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University and in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, where he also earned his undergraduate degree, Farid started his career at Hewlett-Packard where he spent seven years in various engineering and management positions. He started his first venture, Wavetron Microsystems, in 1990 and served as the CEO and President until 1995, when SBS Technology acquired the company. Farzad, the younger brother, received a B.S. in mechanical engineering and a B.A. in computer science from San Jose State University. Between the years of 1993 to 1995 he was at Oracle Corporation, a database company, where he was originally the vice president of marketing for company's tools division and senior director of product development in the desktop products division. From June 1994 to November 1995, he served as senior vice president of new media division for Oracle. The two brothers joined together in October of 1995 to found Diba, the company that pioneered the concept of the Information Appliance. At Diba, Farid served as chairman and chief technology officer, and Farzad served as the president and chief executive officer during the period of two years after which the company was acquired by Sun Microsystems in August 1997. After completing the handover of his responsibilities in Diba to Sun Microsystems, Farid founded Arzoon in September 1999, where he is currently the chairman and chief executive officer. Arzoon's mission is to harness the speed and simplicity of the Internet to synchronize the flow of information and freight to empower the world's transportation professionals. In his role, Farid shapes the vision and overall strategic and business direction of Arzoon. Within eight months, he was able to attract about $34 million in three rounds of funding, hire 85 world-class experts in transportation and technology, and introduce Arzoon's Internet platform to select customers. Farzad is currently serving as the chief executive officer and chairman of the board of directors of Niku since he co-founded Niku in January 1998. Farid's innovative, first-to-market ventures have consistently attracted the attention of media worldwide. Forbes magazine called him a 'whiz kid.Ó Business Week described Diba's information appliances as 'startling in their simplicityÓ and USA Today, under the banner headline, 'Diba Goal: Bring Masses On-Line,Ó featured Diba's 'ingenious productsÓ. On the cover of Red Herring, a photo featured the two brothers as 'The Toast of Silicon Valley.Ó

Diba Inc. was founded in 1995 by Farid Dibachi as the company Chairman and CTO, and Farzad Dibachi as president and CEO. Since its inception, the company started as a leading technology provider for the Information Appliance marketplace. Dedicated to making information more accessible to more people, Diba created an open, end-to-end architecture for the development and delivery of Information Appliances and services, and licensed its technologies to consumer electronics companies, appliance manufacturers and service providers. Using Diba's technologies, these companies have been able to quickly and affordably create a wide range of Information Appliances for homes, schools and offices. By 1997, Diba had expanded to 79 employees, achieved a considerable recognition for its vision, and proved its technology as a practical means for closing the information gap between the technically-elite and the rest of society. In this year, Diba also received tempting acquisition offers from a number of big companies in the Silicon Valley. Diba's founders finally decided to merge with Sun Microsystem, a recognized industry leader and innovator, as it had the resources and complementary technologies needed to accelerate the process of getting networked Information Appliances into consumers' hands. At the same time, Diba took a leading Internet appliance infrastructure delivery capability to Sun. The size of the deal was over $200 million dollars. Ever since, Sun and Diba together have targeted consumer electronics manufacturers in developing end-to-end solutions aimed at accelerating the delivery of JavaTM-enabled information appliances into the hands and homes of consumers worldwide. In addition, the two companies worked with major consumer electronics companies and manufacturers to provide technologies for building consumer products such as Internet-enabled TVs, Internet-enabled set top and satellite boxes, and smart phones. "Using Diba's technology, Sun has been offering all of the ingredients necessary to create Information Appliance solutions into tightly integrated packages - resulting in a significant time-to-market advantage for OEMs," said Chet Silvestri, president of Sun Microelectronics. "This modular, open, standards-based platforms has benefitted both OEMs and customers because they have the power to choose the solutions that best fit their needs."

Anoosheh Ansari
Anousheh Ansari once dreamed of being an astronaut while growing up in her native Tehran, Iran. Today the 34-year-old Anoosheh is the Vice President and General Manager of the IntelligentIP division of Sonus Networks, formed in January 2001 through Sonus' acquisition of 'Telecom Technologies Inc.Ó, the company that Anoosheh founded and turned into a force in the telecommunication industry. Immediately prior to founding Telecom Technologies, Anoosheh provided consulting services to the major telecommunications service providers and vendors in the areas of frame relay and ATM switch testing and evaluation. Her early career employment included positions with MCI Telecommunications Corporation and Communication Satellite Corporation (COMSAT) in various engineering capacities working on architectural design for SS7 and ISDN networks. Anoosheh was the recipient of Working Woman Magazine's National and Regional Entrepreneurial Excellence award for General Excellence and Ernst and Young's Entrepreneur of the Year¨ Award, Southwest Region, for the Technology and Communications category. She has authored numerous technical papers and holds two patents for her work on automated operator services and wireless service node. She was a U.S. delegate at ITU SG VII, SG XI and SG XVII, and a representative at American National Standard Institute technical subcommittees. She holds a master of science degree in electrical engineering from George Washington University and a bachelor's of science degree in electrical engineering and computer science from George Mason University. She is also a member of Eta Kappa Nu, IEEE and NSPE.

Telecom Technologies was founded in 1994 by Anousheh and Hamid Ansari with the vision to build a flexible and creative environment for the development of software expertise and solutions for the telecommunications industry. After extensive careers with leading telecommunications service providers, including MCI and COMSAT, the Ansaris built an integrated software products firm that would enable the world's telecommunications companies to offer competitive services and to meet the ever-increasing growth of the industry. Telecom Technologies has been offering professional services since its inception and created their flagship product FASTest¨ in 1996. In January 1999, Telecom Technologies sold its FASTest¨ product line to Hewlett Packard's (HP) Measurement Organization, now Agilent Technologies. In May 1998, Telecom Technologies acquired Green River Systems ("GRS"), a provider of Local Number Portability (LNP) and Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) products and services. The acquisition added state-of-the-art LNP solutions and network management expertise to the Company's existing portfolio of products and services. In June 1999, Telecom Technologies announced its INtelligentIP softswitch and its INtelligentACD operator services application. Telecom Technologies has since grown to be one of the leading soft-switch vendors in the marketplace. This was accomplished in part by successful partner program and inter-operable lab. The program began in November 1999 and as of December 2000 has grown to over 63 participating vendors. In September 1999, Telecom Technologies acquired Sequel Systems, Inc., a provider of data migration and system implementation services to the telecommunications industry specializing in open computing technology solutions and methodology to meet Operational Support Systems (OSS) business requirements. In January 2001, Telecom Technologies was acquired at over $500 million dollars by Sonus Networks, a leading provider of voice infrastructure solutions. Telecom Technologies' 220 employees now form Sonus' new INtelligentIP division, and will remain in Richardson, Texas.

Armond Harapetian
Armond was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1965, where he completed his studies through the last year of high school. He left Iran for the United States in February of 1983 when still in 12th grade. Arriving in the US late in the school year to complete his credentials for high-school diploma, Armond decided to directly skip to college instead of spending another year to get a diploma; so as he himself puts it he is 'technically a high-school drop-out!Ó. He continued his studies at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) in electrical engineering and received his B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees. He started his career as a design engineer in Sierra Semiconductor (now PMC-Sierra) before joining the Semiconductor System Division in Rockwell Corporation. While at Rockwell, he was responsible for carrying out several mixed-signal CMOS chip designs for GSM and other digital cellular telephone standards. Prior to founding his company, Armond was leading the engineering design team at Oasis Design, where he designed the architecture of an HDSL analog front-end chip. Armond started NewPort Communications in 1996 together with one of his colleagues in Rockwell. In NewPort, he is responsible for overseeing the design and development of custom mixed-signal integrated circuits, as well as planning the company's strategic direction. Armond says one of the main motives for him to start his venture was the joy he felt in the challenge of a startup experience that he could not find else where. He also believes that one cannot be too rational once he starts a little company and claims that he is going to take on multi-billion dollar competitors; however, he has to be careful to choose the right product for right market while considering his strength points.

NewPort Communications was founded in 1996 by Dr. Armond Harapetian and Lorenzo Longo in Irvine, California. The company started as a premier supplier of mixed-signal integrated circuits (ICs) for the high-speed communications infrastructure market, with a business objective of developing highly innovative ICs for the synchronous optical network (SONET) based fiber in infrastructure in the United States and synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) based networks in Europe. The system economics of NewPort Communicationsâ solutions make it ideal for dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) applications that can significantly increase the bandwidth of the existing installed base of fiber worldwide. NewPort has achieved its competitive advantage in the field of communications ICs by its unique technology, called current-controlled CMOS (C3MOS), which enables them to develop low cost, highly integrated solutions that operates up to 10 gigabit per second (Gbps) and with very low power dissipation. NewPort decided to use its competitive high-speed technology in the communication space based on the extremely positive outlooks by several analysts, who had forecasted a bandwidth demand by the service providers will quadruple by year 2002. To support this bandwidth demand, telecommunications companies will be forced to upgrade their systems, and NewPort high-speed ICs are the best fit for this next generation networks. In July 1999, NewPort announced the world's first single-chip 2.5-Gbps (OC-48) CMOS SONET/SDH transceiver, and followed that success by announcing their breakthrough product for the world's first 10-Gbps (OC196) transceiver in May of 2000. Prior to this, the latest 10-Gbps transceivers parts were implemented in expensive and power-hungry technologies such as GaAs and SiGe, while such an IC was believed to be impossible in present CMOS technologies by industry experts. The 10-Gbps CMOS transceiver made an industry record that has not been broken to date. Following these great successes, NewPort got a unique reputation that attracted many companies. The company executives finally decided to accept the merger offer from BroadCom Corporation in August of year 2000 at a valuation of more than $1250 Million. NewPort is currently the center for high-speed communications IC design in BroadCom Corporation.

Maryam Rofougaran & Reza Rofougaran
Maryam and Reza Rofougaran, two talented siblings from the city of Isfahan, Iran, were born in years 1968 and 1964 respectively, where they continued their education through middle and high school, and received several awards for their excellence in different fields. They then immigrated to the United States to pursue their dream of becoming a successful scientist and a difference maker in the world of physics and engineering. Pursuing their dreams, Maryam and Reza both continued their BS, and MS at UCLA and early on started to work as a research assistant for Prof. Asad Abidi who is internationally well known for his contribution to the field of RF CMOS. They were the over-achievers who again received several awards and scholarship throughout their schooling years at UCLA. The field they focused on as their graduate research was RF circuit design for wireless systems using digital CMOS technology, a goal that seemed to be impossible by industry belief. After completing their B.S. and M.S. degrees, they decided to work in the industry for a few years before continuing their doctorate in the same school. Preceding Maryam, Reza started his PHD thesis on the implementation of a CMOS 900MHz frequency hopped spread spectrum system for short-range wireless applications in digital CMOS technology, where Maryam joined his group at UCLA as a key member to help him with the research as a part of her own Ph.D. few years later. Their Ph.D. work at UCLA became a very successful project and got them international recognition and awards. They are the author and co-authors of numerous international conference and journal papers, a number of which became award-wining papers including the 1995 European Solid-State Circuits Conference 'Best Paper AwardÓ, the 1996 International Solid State Circuits Conference 'ISSCC Jack Kilby AwardÓ for Outstanding Paper, the 1997 ISSCC 'Jack Raper AwardÓ for Outstanding Technology Direction, and the 1998 Design Automation ConferenceÓ Best Paper Award. Reza completed his Ph.D. thesis in 1998 while we was working on the plans to start Innovent System with his sister Maryam who was one year from completing her Ph.D. at UCLA. By 1998 the two brother and sister were involved with a lot of start-up companies as consultant or part-time and had lived through experience and excitement of being part of a start-up company, where they observed and learned the facts in making a company successful or unsuccessful. The technologies they developed during this period included system and IC designs of several wireless applications such as GSM, GPS, CT2 Cordless phones, low-power pagers, and CDMA front-ends using CMOS, Bipolar, BiCMOS and SiGe Technologies. Reza and Maryam had decided to start their own company way before their company got funded in the January of 1999. Pioneering RF CMOS at UCLA, working in the industry with other start-ups and observing their friends and strangers succeed in pursuing their goal and accomplishing their mission, they were all motivated to start their own company focusing on real application of what they had pioneered 'RF CMOSÓ. They founded MicroLink Corporation (later known as Innovent Systems) in the January of 1999. Reza and Maryam were co-founders, technologists and also manages of the company, while also being key persons in identifying strategic partners and customers. They assembled a very strong technical advisory board with internationally known individuals in both the academy and the industry. They also attracted a very strong technical group to their company since day one. At MicroLink Maryam acted as the vice president and Reza as the chief technical officer. After the acquisition of Innovent Systems in the July of 2000 by Broadcom corp., Reza as the senior technical director and Maryam as the technical director have been leading the development activities of the wireless division of Broadcom.

Innovent System was started with the mission to produce chip-sets for short-range wireless applications for standards such as Bluetooth and HomeRF. The company was partially funded by Broadcom Corporation whose founders knew Maryam and Reza from their years in UCLA, where Henry Samueli the founder of Broadcom was professor and second advisor to Reza and Maryam. In addition to Broadcom, Cross point Ventures, Ventana and several other angel funds participated in the first round of finance of Innovent, then called MicroLink. The company started its operation in 1999 and the goal was set to have the first demonstration before the end of the year. During the operation of Innovent systems the founders were key persons in setting directions for the company both technically as well as marketing and business. They were actively involved with technical development and facilitating the development by constantly interfacing with the offshore foundry houses, tool houses and others. In addition to the main office in West LA where Innovent located to recruit newly talented RFIC (radio frequency integrated circuits) graduate students from UCLA, the founders opened an office in San Diego where they could recruit experienced ASIC engineers from the big companies in the region. The company was set up as a whole system provider rather than just focusing on the chip desing. The founders knew that to make a company big and be able to go public they had to be a system provider rather than just a design house. Innovent delivered its first milestone that was its first silicon chip within 6 months before the end of 1999. Innovent's first silicon chip was 98% functional despite the complexity of the system and the company was able to demonstrate its low cost solution to the interested potential customers. Up to this point the company had grown to 40 people most of whom were excellent engineers. After the first milestone the founders build the marketing and operation side of the company. Before the middle of 2000 the company had grown to more than 60 employees and had numerous press releases in conjunction with Samsung and TSMC regarding working relations and investments in its second round of finance. The analysts had called the company 'Broadcom of wirelessÓ expecting the company to become as big as Broadcom in the future. However, by June of 2000, within one and a half year after its inception, the two founders received an irresistible offer from Broadcom corp. for a merger. After a few months the founders decided to sell the company to Broadcom, where there was a very good synergy between the two companies and the merger would speed up and facilitate the volume production of their chips for entering the market faster. The company had positioned itself to be the leader for the development of blue-tooth standard and this merger would ensure the maintenance of its position in the market. The merger was announced early June for over 500 million dollars. This was one of the fastest growing companies in terms of value and development in among all the semiconductor companies to date. By the time that the merger was official, Innovent had 80 employees with 50 employees at El Segundo and 33 in San Diego. Innovent is now the center of wireless activity in Broadcom and the founders continue to lead the activity of the wireless.