These same magazines have all done stories on me and taken my picture too. They love to play up the human and quirky side of our business. No one wants to write about the fact that I, and almost everyone who works for me, am obsessed. Obsessed with making IDT as profitable as it can possibly be. Believe me, when the other guys were out in the surf with the California girls, the founder was sitting in his office for days on end trying to get his distributor to push a few more container loads of surfboards, or getting a little better terms on fiberglass. If he lost sight of this, he’d still be on the beach, but somebody else’s name would be on the board.

For my part, I screwed up. By turning our Internet business into a nonprofit entity, I warped our priorities. Rather than doing what made the most sense for us and for our customers, I did what would make us seem most like heroes in the press. I became concerned not primarily with the consumers’ purchasing of our service, but with the press’s reception of our company. As a result, I almost missed the boat, and didn’t begin selling local Internet access until the window of opportunity had almost closed. Only the fact that this was a brand-new industry, and all of our competitors were making their own strategic mistakes, saved us from oblivion.

One might point out, of course, that the whole IIA fiasco did involve us in the Internet and developed both our technical and business ability to master it. Well, maybe, but I’m just not sure. It seems to me that once we got our feet wet in the Internet, we’d have had to be dead not to realize that it could be a gold mine. We would have been a year ahead of the game if we’d tried to sell it cheap rather than giving it away, but I’m finished crying over spilled milk.

In a way, the IIA was similar to my college experience. For me, Harvard was a prison, and I hated virtually every minute of it. I found it intellectually sterile, arrogant, closed-minded, and unfriendly. People tell me that surely I must be mistaken, that perhaps I gained something from being in the heady atmosphere of the place. Perhaps, they say, it made you more polished, or more erudite. I always answer the same way. You can’t spend three or four years of your life in any environment, having a set of new experiences, and not come out with new knowledge or perspective. The only thing is, I’m sure I would have gained just as much if I’d spent three years as a zookeeper’s assistant or as an actual prison inmate.

The IIA, I’m sorry to say, is pretty much the same story. Sure, we learned a lot, but what a wasteful way to have done it. I suppose, though, that I did take one genuinely valuable lesson away from the experience. I’m much less concerned with what the press thinks, and I do many fewer interviews now than I used to. I’d rather see my advertisements for customers in publications than read articles about what an “aw, shucks,” kind of guy I am. I’ve also become much more focused on market share and profitability than I am in exploring every new opportunity for its own sake. In the short run, this sometimes makes life less interesting, but in the long run it opens up much greater vistas.

I’m tempted at this point to tell a little story. It seems that in days of old, people were very prone to idol worship, and this was very disturbing to the righteous people. So the righteous prayed to G-d that the desire for idol worship should disappear. G-d warned these righteous men that He would comply with their request, but He wanted them to know that as a result, religious fervor in the world would be diminished. The righteous felt that the cost was worth it, and the Lord complied. Afterward, the righteous felt that things had been improved.

They then prayed to G-d to remove all selfishness and love of gain from the world. G-d again warned them that this was dangerous, but they insisted. G-d agreed, but said He’d give it a three-day trial, and only make it permanent if the righteous still wanted it then. After three days, no farmer had milked his cow, no builder had raised a hammer, no carriage driver had harnessed his horses to a wagon. Everyone was just sitting at home, lazy, unmotivated, unhappy, and hungry. After three days, the righteous people realized their mistake and begged the Lord to relent.

The profit may not seem pretty, but like the old joke goes, we need the eggs!