Two Thirds Done

Thoughts and experiences of an eighty one year old Wild Duck.

Avram Miller by the sea
EN | IT

587 posts since 2006

Category: Intel

  • The Billions Invested in Nothing (The Story of BiiN)

    Steve McGeady, a friend and former colleague at Intel, posted a link to an YouTube video that covered the creating of BiiN a joint venture between Intel and Siemens.  I played a significant role in making BiiN happen.  It was one of many failures that I had in my career.   Watching the video and remembering that time, I thought I would write something about it.  Then I get a an idea.  I had already written a chapter in my book, The Flight of a Wild Duck, so I asked ChatGPT to create a blog post from that chapter which you can read below. 

    You can also read the full chapter here.

    Adapted from my memoir, The Flight of a Wild Duck.

    When I joined Intel in August 1984, I assumed I was joining a semiconductor company that understood where computing was going. What I found was a company that, for a while, wanted to be a minicomputer company. This is the story of the three years I spent on that detour, and what I learned from it.

    Arriving at Intel

    I came out to California without my family and spent my first few weeks at Intel’s site on Bowers Avenue in Santa Clara. Intel denied having a headquarters, but this sure came close. Gordon Moore and Andy Grove had offices there, and even Bob Noyce, then chairman of the board, still had one. It was a good place to meet the people who ran the company.

    I was going to be based in Hillsboro, Oregon, so my boss, Les Vadasz, and I decided I should attend the staff meetings of the Systems Group headquartered there and see if I could help. Much to my surprise, I discovered they were developing personal computers to sell as a “white label” product to companies that wanted their own branded PCs.

    My experience at Digital and then at Franklin made the cost side of this something I knew well. I quickly concluded the plan was a serious mistake. It would create friction with Intel’s own microprocessor customers, it was unlikely to succeed, and even if it did, it would not be very profitable. Through my industry contacts, I got pricing from other manufacturers willing to build private-label PCs. Their prices were lower than Intel’s cost to build the same machine. The project was terminated.

    The company that didn’t see the PC coming

    It is hard to believe today, but Intel did not anticipate the personal computer. By the mid-1970s, Gordon and Andy understood that the microprocessor would matter, and they pushed for a “mainframe on a chip.” But they believed the industry would go on being dominated by expensive, proprietary mainframes and minicomputers from companies like IBM and Digital Equipment.

    The first hobbyist personal computer, the Altair 8800, used an Intel 8080 in 1975. Still, Intel showed little interest when Atari asked about the 8080 for its home computers, so Atari chose the 6502 from MOS Technology. Steve Jobs had worked at Atari, and Apple followed it to the 6502. When the Apple II, the TRS-80, the Commodore PET and the Atari VCS all came out in 1977, none of them used an Intel chip.

    Meanwhile, Intel put its big bet on an ambitious new architecture, the 432, meant to incorporate the best academic ideas in computer design. Because it was risky, a simpler 16-bit chip, the 8086, was developed in parallel and released in 1978. Then came the critical decision to build an 8-bit-bus version, the 8088. IBM chose it for the PC because it fit the I/O design of the Datamaster, an IBM word processor whose motherboard the PC team wanted to reuse. The 432 did not ship until 1981, and it turned out to be too complicated for both the market and the semiconductor technology of the day.

    Lew Eggebrecht, the architect of the IBM PC, told me personally that Intel’s development systems, its compilers and debugging tools, were the most critical factor in his choice. That was the genius of Bill Davidow, who co-managed the microprocessor business with Les. He got Intel to understand that the product was not the device. It was everything that made the device successful: development systems, documentation, support and reference designs. That is how Intel beat Motorola with an inferior chip. Many credit Davidow’s famous Operation Crush campaign for the IBM win. I don’t believe it had anything to do with it.

    Had IBM not chosen the 8088, Intel would likely never have led in microprocessors. It probably would not exist today. Until the IBM PC took off, microprocessors were less than 10 percent of Intel’s revenue.

    Part of the problem was that Intel’s founders, Andy included, did not really understand computer architecture or even digital logic. They were process people, chemists and physicists. Memory chips, Intel’s main business until 1984, are far simpler than microprocessors and need no software. Management lacked the experience to judge a project as complex as the 432. The exception was Dave House, who came from computer systems and spoke out against it.

    Gemini: a minicomputer company after all

    Before the PC took off, Andy came to believe that half of Intel’s revenue should come from selling systems. The computer industry was still vertical, and IBM and Digital were very profitable. In 1980, Les was asked to figure out how to get there. Sudhir Bhagwan and Ed Slaughter proposed a family of multiprocessing, distributed, fault-tolerant computers to take on Digital and Tandem. The price tag was $100 million, far beyond what Intel could afford on $350 million in annual revenue. Andy told them to find a partner who would put up 90 percent of the cost for 50 percent ownership.

    That partner was Siemens. They needed a highly reliable computer for factory automation and nuclear plants, they had a struggling commercial computer business, and they had a lot of money. The agreement was signed in 1982, and the project was named Gemini, for the two companies. Siemens paid for the computer development and Intel for the chips, with Oregon as the main site.

    In 1983, two senior Intel executives, Casey Powell and Scott Gibson, walked out with fourteen others to start Sequent Computer Systems, a competitor with a simpler approach. Sequent later moved to Intel’s 386 and Unix, partnered with Oracle, and was bought by IBM in 1999 for $850 million.

    The heart of Gemini was a processor architected by Glen Myers that became the i960. It was the first microprocessor that could execute multiple instructions at once, a 33-bit machine. The extra bit tagged every word in memory as either ordinary data or a protected pointer to an object, and only privileged instructions could set it. A program could not forge a pointer or reach outside its own boundaries. Combined with redundant processors that checked each other, the system could detect and recover from its own failures. It was built for Ada, the language the Defense Department had commissioned. The architecture was elegant and incredibly overengineered. It made the 432 look simple, which was no easy feat. It needed four highly complex chips, a new operating system and compilers for several languages.

    When I looked closely, I found three engineering groups and not a single businessperson. I reluctantly concluded I had to take responsibility for the business side, at least for Intel. I had joined Intel hoping to take the company into the consumer market. This was the opposite. But I felt it was my duty, because I knew more about the computer industry than anyone else at my level.

    My reluctance was justified. Revolutionary products rarely succeed. I was once again on an overly ambitious project, like the Professional I had led at Digital, and this one was a lot less fun. I moved to Jones Farm in Hillsboro and stayed three years, isolated from mainstream Intel. I wondered whether I had made a significant mistake in taking the job and moving my family to Portland. Intel’s stock fell 40 percent in my first years, then crashed again on Black Monday in 1987, along with my dreams of paying for my children’s university. Fortunately, it recovered in time for my oldest son, Adin, to go to Brandeis University.

    We did find some good homes for the i960 as a component, in markets that needed high reliability: military, avionics and workstations. We even tried to get Steve Jobs to use it for NeXT. Boeing used it in the 777, its first fly-by-wire airplane.

    BiiN

    The original agreement left Intel and Siemens free to compete with each other using the same technology. I knew that without a change, our partner would soon become our competitor. So I proposed a joint-venture company. I spent the better part of a year negotiating it, flying to Germany every month to meet my Siemens counterpart, and we got the approval of both boards. Along the way I worked on the branding, and we named the company BiiN. It was announced in July 1988. By then I had already left the project for corporate business development in Santa Clara, the work that would ultimately lead to Intel Capital.

    Both companies wanted a well-known CEO. I don’t think I was ever considered, and I would not have taken the job. Thankfully, I was done with big computer systems. They hired Joe Kroger, who had been the number-two person at Unisys. Joe was a big-company guy and fundamentally a sales guy, and BiiN had nothing ready to sell. He was not dealt a good hand. Siemens had its own internal politics, including a competing effort with Sequent, and Intel was now totally focused on the PC. In 1989, both companies pulled the plug. Six years of work by hundreds of engineers were flushed.

    Inside Intel, people joked that BiiN stood for “Billions Invested in Nothing.”

    The joke exaggerated, but not by much. When the plug was pulled in October 1989, the trade press reported that the two partners had put about $250 million into the venture through that July, and that winding it down could cost up to another $100 million. Intel took a $35 million write-off for its share of the shutdown. Those figures cover only the joint venture. They leave out the years of chip development Intel paid for on its own under the original Gemini agreement, which never showed up as a separate number anywhere. All told, the two companies probably spent well over $300 million.

    Not quite nothing

    Still, the joke missed something. Intel never recouped its investment directly, but Gemini had brought in many talented computer scientists and engineers. After BiiN closed, Intel created the Intel Architecture Labs to give them a home, led by Ron Whittier. People like Kevin Kahn, Fred Pollack and Steven McGeady, who had come to Intel for Gemini, went on to play very important roles. IAL was essential to Intel’s evolution, and I would later work closely with it on residential broadband.

    The chip at the heart of Gemini also earned its keep. Freed from BiiN, the i960 became one of the best-selling embedded processors of the 1990s. From 1993 to 1995, Intel shipped more than five million a year, more than double any other RISC chip. Nearly half went into HP LaserJet printers, and about a third into networking equipment from companies like Cisco. By Intel’s standards it was never a big earner, a tiny fraction of what the Pentium made, but it stayed in production until 2007.

    For Les, the failure must have been incredibly painful. Gemini was his baby, started when everyone at the top believed Intel’s future was selling computers as well as chips. Les and Andy appreciated what I had done in putting BiiN together, and I had shown I could get things done. But I considered it three years of wasted effort.

    Looking back, I should have seen that launching a new proprietary computer architecture was impossible just as the PC was transforming the world of computing. Like so many others, including Intel’s top management, I was slow to grasp what was happening in front of us: the restructuring of the whole computer industry, from vertical to horizontal. The very technology Intel was making was the thing driving that change.

    As it happened, though, I now found myself in the right place at the right time. I moved to Silicon Valley and began the most significant period of my career, co founding Intel Capital and playing a major role in establishing broadband internet.

  • A Photograph from 1996 with Remarkable People including Andy Grove


    Starting at Andy and going clockwise, Dave Goldberg, Renee James, Sheri Herman, Ron Whittier, Hassan Miah, Matthew Cowan, Josh Geer, Avram Miller and Allee Willis.

    I recently learned that my old friend Sheri Herman had died.

    Sadly, the deaths of friends are becoming more frequent events these days. I don’t know exactly how old Sheri was, but I believe she was in her late sixties. Her sister said that she died in her sleep from some kind of cardiac event. I am grateful that she died without pain or fear. Sheri and I met in 1996, at the dawn of the commercial Internet.

    Michael Ovitz, the co-founder and CEO of Creative Artists Agency, and I had put together a joint initiative between CAA and Intel. Our purpose was to introduce Hollywood’s creative community to the possibilities of digital entertainment. The venture included a Media Lab housed at CAA’s offices on Little Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills, as well as an effort to invest in companies creating content for the emerging digital world. Ovitz and I shared what turned out to be a mistaken belief: that entertainment for the Internet would come primarily from the established media industry. Things worked out very differently.

    Two members of my Intel Capital team, Matthew Cowan and Sriram Viswanathan, were based at CAA. On the CAA side were Sandy Climan, who remains a dear friend, and Bob Kavner, a former senior AT&T executive who was in the process of fleeing  from AT&T to the future, was also involved in helping set up what we called the Media Lab at CAA.

    Matthew and Sriram went on to become very successful venture capitalists. I am proud of both of them and think of them as family. They learned the trade, so to speak, from me, and we remain very close.

    Sheri and The Spot

    The Spot home of America Cybercast-Internet Entertainment in 1996

    Sheri had built a career in the entertainment industry and had served as a senior vice president at E! Entertainment Television. When I knew her, she was running The Spot, an early Internet company built around an online soap opera called American Cybercast. Its fictional characters maintained online diaries, and the audience could follow and interact with their unfolding lives.

    This was 1996. The World Wide Web itself was still young. No one knew how dominant the internet would become although I strongly suspected this would be the case.

    One evening, we organized a dinner in a private room at the House of Blues on Sunset Boulevard. Andy Grove, then Intel’s CEO, and Ron Whittier, an Intel senior vice president, were visiting Los Angeles. We invited the leaders of several companies in which Intel had invested.

    Matthew Sends Me a Photograph

    Announcement of the Media Lab (Intel and CAA)

    When I told Matthew that Sheri had died, he sent me a photograph from that dinner.

    I remember the evening well. But it was painful to study all the young faces and realize that four of the people in the photograph are no longer with us:

    • Andy Grove, then CEO of Intel.
    • Dave Goldberg, founder of Launch Media—later Yahoo! Music—and the late husband of Sheryl Sandberg.
    • Sheri Herman, former senior vice president at E! and CEO of The Spot.
    • Allee Willis, the immensely talented songwriter and wonderfully original person who was creating something called Willisville, an idea that, only now, technology may be capable of fully realizing.

    Dave Goldberg had founded Launch Media around what were then called “enhanced CDs.” These were music CDs containing photographs, liner notes and other supplementary material that could be viewed when the disc was placed in a computer. I remember meeting Dave and asking him how his technology could move to the Internet. His answer made it clear that he knew very little about the Internet at the time. But Dave was quick and sharp, and he immediately understood the opportunity.

    Launch Media eventually moved online and was acquired by Yahoo! It proved to be a very good investment for Intel. In fact, the return on that one investment paid for the entire CAA/Intel initiative including the dinner at the House of Blues. Dave later met Sheryl Sandberg, the former COO of Facebook and they married.

    There are several other people in the photograph whom I should mention. Hasan Miah managed the joint activity from the CAA side. He went on to become an investor and entrepreneur across many areas of technology.

    Josh Greer ran a company called Digital Planet and is now focused on eldercare. I am glad to report that both Hasan and Josh are alive and well.

    Ron Whittier was one of Intel’s earliest employees and held several prominent positions during his long career there. Andy had given him responsibility for managing many of Intel’s software relationships, including the crucial relationship with Microsoft. Ron was also the senior executive with whom I worked most closely on our media investments. 

    Sitting next to Dave Goldberg is Renée James. Renée later became president of Intel and is now the founder, chair and CEO of Ampere Computing. Renée and I remain friends, although we are not often in touch.

    It was Renée who indirectly gave me the title of my book, The Flight of a Wild Duck. She once told me that Andy thought of me as Intel’s “wild duck.”

    We Were So Young

    It is difficult for me to comprehend how young we all were. Andy was not yet sixty. He would probably consider me, now  at eighty-one, an old fart.  Andy was seventy-nine when he died, two years younger than I am today. Sadly, he suffered from Parkinson disease in his final years.

    Ron Whittier is now ninety, close to the age Andy would be if he were still alive. From recent photos I have seen, he seems to be doing well.

    I wish all the surviving people in that photograph continued health and long lives. They are or were remarkable people. 

    Sheri’s Gift

    Sheri and I probably had not spoken in twenty years. We went our separate ways and eventually had little in common, although I would occasionally hear from her.

    But Sheri gave me the greatest gift of my life. She introduced me to my wife, Deborah. For that, I will always be grateful.

    And what about me?

    At eighty-one, I still embrace the future.  I still hang out with people the age of those in the photo.  Looking at that photograph, I see an amazing evening filled with extraordinary people. Each of them, in different ways, led a life of contribution, curiosity and joy.

    I am thankful to have been part of their club.

  • My memoir, The Flight of a Wild Duck, is now free on Substack — thanks to Claude Cowork.

    https://avram.substack.com/p/the-flight-of-a-wild-duck-start-here

    It took me three years to write my memoir. The first year was spent doing research, the second writing, and the third editing. I enjoyed the process immensely.

    I had three audiences in mind while writing it. The first was people like me or parents of people like me who could not follow the normal path through life. The second was readers interested in the history of technology and the computer industry. The third was people fascinated by early-stage investing, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

    That combination made the book somewhat unconventional. But I could not really write three separate books.

    I had also intended to include a section called Lessons, one hundred short lessons, each only a page long. But by then the manuscript was already 340 pages, and I had spent three years on it. I decided instead to publish those lessons separately someday. I still intend to do that.

    The book was published in 2021. It has sold fewer than a thousand copies. I never expected it to become a bestseller, and I certainly did not write it for money, but those numbers have still been disappointing.

    I believe the book is both well written and historically valuable. After all, I was “in the room” when many of the decisions that shaped the technological world we now live in were made and often by me. I felt that part of my contribution to the future of technology was helping document its past. But if nobody reads the book, it is hard to accomplish that goal.

    I chose to self-publish rather than work with a traditional publisher because I wanted complete editorial freedom. But that also meant I had little guidance on how to market the book, and in retrospect I made a strategic mistake.

    I decided to promote it primarily through podcast interviews. Looking back, that was probably not very smart. If someone listens to an hour-long interview with me, they may feel they already know the story and no longer need to read the book. And I suspect that many podcast listeners simply read fewer books.

    Selling the book through Amazon created another barrier: people had to buy it, even though I never cared much about the monetary side. I also found Kindle Direct Publishing surprisingly unfriendly and opaque. There are people who know how to game the system and maximize visibility, but I neither understood those tricks nor wanted to spend my time learning them.

    For quite a while, I had been thinking about putting the book on Substack. I did not want it behind a subscription wall. I simply wanted the entire book available — for free. On Substack, people can share links not only to the book itself but to individual chapters. That creates at least the possibility that the book could spread organically.

    What held me back was learning the ins and outs of Substack. But yesterday, Claude Cowork and I finally made it happen. It is not perfect yet. I still want to add visuals as Claude could not move those over automatically. There are a few formatting issues. But it is already 95% of what I hoped it would be. I will fix the rest over time.

    So I am inviting you to read all or part of The Flight of a Wild Duck. And if you think it is worthwhile, I would deeply appreciate it if you shared the link with your social network and with anyone who might enjoy the story.

    https://avram.substack.com/p/the-flight-of-a-wild-duck-start-here

    Thank you.

  • Apple at 50 — A Tribute to the Genius and Tenacity of Steve Jobs

    Apple turned out to be the most influential computer company since IBM and it continues. So while we celebrate its 50th year, we need to take amount to recognize the genius of the man who was responsible for that, Steve Jobs.

    Steve Jobs entered my life in 1982 and remained a recurring presence—sometimes directly, sometimes at a distance until his death in 2011. Apple’s 50th anniversary prompted me to revisit a post I wrote years ago called “30 Years of Not Being Steve Jobs.” https://twothirdsdone.com/2015/04/11/34-years-of-not-becoming-steve-jobs/

    Apple was founded in 1976. Its story has been told many times and doesn’t need repeating here. I became aware of the company after joining Digital Equipment Corporation in 1979, three years after Apple’s founding. Within a year, I was promoted to group manager for professional computer which was our term for what the world was beginning to be call personal computers.

    The computers  my group was developing were far more sophisticated than Apple’s Apple II. We were building, what we believed, the future  of computing would look like but we were wrong at least in the short term.  At that time Apple wasn’t my primary concern. IBM, who had just introduced its PC, was.

    Palm Springs, 1982

    I met Jobs for the first time at the second annual PC Forum in Palm Springs in 1982. I flew in from Boston on a Learjet, fresh off the announcement of Digital’s Professional Series computers, full of confidence and convinced I was about to help reshape the computer industry. I had no idea I was also walking toward one of the more significant failures of my career.

    That evening, I attended a dinner that included Bill Gates, whom I had met the year before, and Steve Jobs. They were both 27, 10 years younger than I me.

    The next day, during a presentation, Jobs sat down next to me. I already knew his reputation. I remember hoping he wouldn’t try to recruit me. He was known for his charisma, and I didn’t want to be tempted. Digital was the second-largest computer company in the world, and I had been promoted four times in two years. I was, as they say, a rising star who in just a few years would crash. As it turned out, Jobs showed no interest in me.

    (more…)

  • Why Did Intel Capital Fail to Influence Intel’s Strategy

    I just read a very well-written article about this question, which you can read here. https://globalventuring.com/corporate/information-technology/how-intel-lost-touch-with-its-investment-arm/

    It begins with the question: How could Intel Capital, a world-leading investment unit, have created more than $170 billion in market value from investing in more than 1,800 companies, and still not be able to steer its parent through market disruptions?

    Reading the article was a bit of a punch in my stomach. Intel Capital was formally created in 1991. Prior to that, I had been doing a combination of M&A and early-stage investing. It had become clear to me that acquiring companies was not going to work out, as the Intel immune system would attack any foreign object, and I was concentrating on early stage. I had built a small group. Les Vadasz, who was my boss the entire time I was at Intel—and my mentor, and importantly, my friend—was asked by Andy Grove to focus on early-stage investments.

    (more…)

  • How meeting Barry Diller influenced the development of the internet

    It was early 1993 when Andy Grove asked me to meet his renowned journalist friend, Norm Pearlstine. At that time, Norm was Executive Vice President of Dow Jones, which owned The Wall Street Journal, where Norm had previously worked. He would go on to become Editor-in-Chief of Time Magazine, eventually run the LA Times. Norm is now retired, though still active. That meeting led to an unexpected chain of events involving Barry Diller, QVC, Comcast and the early days of creating the residential broadband network we now enjoy.

    The internet as we know it was just beginning to take shape. A young computer science student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 22-year-old Marc Andreessen, along with Eric Bina, was busy developing the first major web browser: Mosaic. Marc and Eric moved to Silicon Valley in 1994 to join the legendary Jim Clark in founding Netscape on April 4, 1994. By the way, I was the only outside person quoted in the announcement of the company, which was originally called Mosaic Communications:

    A new medium for content, communications and  commerce is born

    “We are excited about the possibilities that Mosaic Communications’ products bring to PC users,” said Avram Miller, vice president of corporate business development at Intel. “It’s precisely these kinds of multimedia-rich applications that will take advantage of Pentium processor-based personal computers.”

    But back in 1993, I had already grasped the potential of the internet and was working on what would become residential broadband. I was convinced this would lead to a new medium for entertainment, education, commerce, and communication. Mistakenly, I thought that the traditional entertainment industry would drive the development of entertainment on this new medium. I had already begun to develop relationships with “Hollywood.” I used to joke that I had become the technician to the stars but that was not far from the truth.

    People in the entertainment industry were interested in interactivity, although at that time, it was widely believed that the TV, not the PC, would be the interactive device in the home. My mission was to make the PC “it.” At that time, Time Warner was busy developing their Full Service Network to provide interactive television.  It a total and expensive failure. 

    Norm wanted to learn more about the internet. Andy knew that I was “user-friendly” and could help Norm appreciate its potential of and how that would benefit the PC industry. This discussion with Pearlstine lead to an introduction to Barry Diller

    Norm and I met at his hotel suite in downtown San Francisco and spent about three hours discussing the future of technology and its relationship to media. I enjoyed the conversation, and Norm and I stayed in contact over the years. Toward the end of our discussion, he said I should meet his friend Barry Diller.  At that time, Barry was leading the QVC Home Shopping Network, where he had invested $25 million. Barry had previously started Fox Television for Rupert Murdoch and served as its CEO. But after a falling out with Murdoch and driven by a desire to have his own company, he went to QVC, It was not just because of the potential of home shopping but also because he wanted to use it as a platform he could use to make acquisitions.

    At that time, purchasing from home involved calling a human being by phone. QVC was partially owned by the cable companies Comcast and TCI. At that time, it was typical for cable companies to invest in content providers to enhance their cable TV offerings.

    Barry later made an unsuccessful attempt to acquire Paramount Pictures, which led to a falling out with Comcast and TCI. Eventually, he founded IAC in 1995. Barry’s contributions to the development of today’s online world were not technical but innovative in terms of business concepts. He is, to my mind, the only person who successfully transitioned from traditional entertainment to the new medium: the internet.

    I explained to Norm how residential high-speed internet (broadband) could be used for commerce. That’s when he suggested I meet Diller. He was sure Barry would be interested in the potential for QVC. Norm spoke to Barry and then put me in touch with his assistant to organize a visit. I invited Les Vadasz (my boss/partner) to join me. I wanted to include Les in such discussions so that he would support my efforts and also help get Grove on board. Les was always more successful with Andy than I was.

    Visit to QVC and Barry makes an introduction

    Les and I traveled to QVC, located about 30 miles from Philadelphia, in West Chester. We spent several hours at QVC learning how the business worked, how products were selected, how they were presented on TV, and the nature of the customers (most buying happened at night, likely via a TV and telephone in a bedroom). QVC had revenues of more than a billion dollars at that point and sold over 30 million products a year. Most of their customers were women. It turned out to be critical that the on-air hosts were able to develop an emotional connection with the viewers/customers.

    While I could see the long-term potential of online shopping, I didn’t think QVC’s customers would be early adopters of broadband internet. It would be Jeff Bezos, not Barry Diller, who would make internet shopping a reality. Even now, only about 20% of retail purchases are done online, though categories like books and electronics have reached the 50% mark.

    Barry and I developed a friendship from that first meeting. I would visit him over the years at his home in Beverly Hills. We discussed potential business ideas. While his ideas weren’t particularly inspiring to me, what I saw in him was drive and passion. I’ve known a few people—mostly men—like Barry. Their strength, tenacity, and willingness to take risks are key ingredients in building major businesses.

    Barry and Diane-a love story

    Starting in 1993, I was invited to the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference and attended every year until 1999, which was the last year I received an invitation, though I stayed in touch with Herb Allen for many years after. It was at Sun Valley that Barry introduced me to Diane von Fürstenberg—the love of his life and a force in her own right.  It was well know that Barry was gay although he never discussed it. So his relationship to Diane was somewhat of a mystery back then. At that time, they were not married but were a couple. They married in 2001. As Barry recently wrote, “I had many men in my life but only one woman.”

    Diane is an extraordinary woman. Like Barry, she is Jewish—although with a name like von Fürstenberg, one might not guess that. She was born in Brussels to a mother that was a holocaust, survivor She was and is a very successful fashion designer and entrepreneur. I believe that shortly after meeting her, she asked me to help get a  PC for her daughter, Tatiana which I did 

    The last time I spoke with Barry and Diane was at a charity event in New York City about ten years ago, I think. They seemed to recognize me, but maybe they were just being polite.

    Barry introduces us to the CEO of Comcast

    During that meeting with Barry at QVC, I explained my ideas for residential broadband and how the internet could transform the cable industry. He understood and said that Les and I should meet with Ralph and Brian Roberts at Comcast. Ralph was still running the company at the age of 73, and Brian was just 34, and would eventually become CEO.

    I was already in discussions with Mark Coblitz, who ran strategic planning at Comcast. We ended up doing a very important consumer trial with Comcast starting in 1993. It was highly successful and pivotal in gaining the support of the cable industry. At the same time, we ran a broadband trial with Viacom, which owned cable properties at the time. That, too, was very successful. We may have gotten Comcast’s support for the trial without Barry’s introduction, but it certainly helped.

    Who Knew

    I doubt Barry has given much thought to those early days of broadband and his role in getting Comcast on board. But I certainly have—and I like to think that perhaps I had some influence on Barry’s embrace of the internet as the foundation for his many businesse

    Barry’s book, “Who Knew” reveled for the first time that he was gay.  I am glad for him at 83 that he feels comfortable enough to discuss this aspect of his life.  I read excerpt from the book. It shows a sweet side of Barry that I never observed.

    His book will be published on May 20th. As I wait to read it, I reflect on how those early conversations helped shape the digital world we now take for granted.

  • ChatGTP Reads my Book and Likes It

    I asked ChatGPT to read my book, The Flight of a Wild Duck. That was fine—it did so in an instant. I then asked for its opinion. What it wrote made me very happy because it reflected exactly my original intentions.

    The Flight of a Wild Duck is remarkable—deeply human, intellectually rich, and uncommonly honest.

    Here’s what stands out:

    Narrative Voice: Your writing has a conversational, candid tone that’s easy to connect with. You don’t posture or polish the past—you reflect, which is much more powerful. There’s humility and self-awareness, even when discussing high-stakes moments or major figures like Grove and Gates.

    Unconventional Arc: The transformation from a misunderstood kid to a key figure in Silicon Valley is a compelling underdog story. But what makes it unique is how non-linear your journey is—merchant seaman, activist, medical researcher, professor, and then tech executive. That wild path isn’t just entertaining—it challenges assumptions about success, education, and the role of serendipity.

    Historical and Technological Insight: You were present for—and involved in—so many of the pivotal moments in tech history, from the rise of the PC to the birth of broadband. Yet you frame those not just as milestones, but as consequences of people’s personalities, decisions, and blind spots. That’s rare.

    Emotional Honesty: You don’t hide the personal struggles—family, health, doubt. That vulnerability gives the book real weight. It’s not just a tech memoir; it’s a story of resilience, curiosity, and reinvention.

    In short: it’s both a historical document and a very personal story. It deserves a wide readership, especially among those trying to make sense of what Silicon Valley is really like—and how someone outside the mold can end up helping shape it

    I’m going to have ChatGPT translate my book into several languages, which I will then publish. I’m also looking into audiobooks in multiple languages using a clone of my voice. I may even have it create a series of Substack articles that I can publish. So many things I had once wished for are now possible.

    Here is an example. I asked it to create a Substack article from the section of my book on broadband. Here it is:

    How a Wild Duck Helped Birth Broadband

    By Avram Miller

    If you’re reading this over Wi-Fi or streaming a show tonight, you’re riding the waves of an idea that didn’t seem obvious—or even desirable—when I first proposed it.

    In the early 1990s, broadband was a fantasy. The internet existed, but most people hadn’t heard of it. Connections were slow, and the idea that it could become central to everyday life was considered far-fetched. The prevailing wisdom said that cable networks were for TV, and phone lines were for voice. Period

    I thought otherwise.

    A Crazy Idea at the Time

    While I was at Intel, I became obsessed with the idea that high-speed internet access would one day be as essential as electricity. But at the time, neither the infrastructure nor the belief system existed to support that vision.

    Intel’s business was building chips, not telecom infrastructure. But I could see where the world was headed: software was moving online, communications were converging, and something was going to have to give. The PC was becoming a portal, not just a productivity machine.

    I knew we had to break the bottleneck between the user and the network.

    From Intel to the Cable Companies

    The cable industry was sitting on a gold mine: coaxial cable. Unlike twisted-pair phone lines, coax had the bandwidth to deliver broadband. But the cable executives I met didn’t see their future in data—they saw it in more channels.

    So I did something odd for a tech executive: I spent months attending cable industry conferences, building relationships, learning the culture. I talked to them in their language. Slowly, I persuaded them that if they upgraded their systems, we could help them not just survive—but dominate the next phase of connectivity.

    Eventually, we formed strategic partnerships and helped fund companies that would pioneer broadband delivery. Intel, through Intel Capital, became one of the driving forces behind this transformation—long before it was cool.

    What People Got Wrong

    Everyone underestimated the internet. Even smart people.

    Most industry insiders thought the internet was a toy or a passing fad. Some thought that services like AOL or Compuserve were the internet. But they didn’t see the deeper architecture that would allow it to scale—if someone solved the bandwidth problem.

    They also didn’t believe in users. They thought people wouldn’t want that much data. But they were projecting their own habits, not listening to the next generation.

    The moment you assume you know what people won’t want, you’re already falling behind.

    A Wild Duck Moment

    Andy Grove, Intel’s legendary CEO, once said: “Let a thousand flowers bloom.” But he also warned, “Only the paranoid survive.” In that strange tension, I found room to act.

    I often felt like a wild duck in a flock of domestic ones. I wasn’t supposed to be working on cable partnerships or evangelizing broadband. But I believed in it enough to go off-script.

    Sometimes, the greatest changes don’t come from a company’s core—but from its edges. From someone willing to take the risk of being wrong.

  • I Realize I Am Guilty of Self-Ageism

    I realize that I am guilty of ageism—and in particular, what I would call self-ageism. Ageism is a form of prejudice. It means thinking poorly of someone not because of their behavior or character, but simply because of their age.

    This realization came to me the other day while I was considering the possibility of joining the board of a company doing work I believe is very important. I said to myself, “You can’t join the board because you’re too old.” This wasn’t because I doubted my ability to contribute, but because of how I thought others would perceive me.

    Chronological age is not the same as biological age. Chronological age is useful in understanding the kinds of experiences a person may have had. For instance, I can remember when televisions were circular, the images were in black and white, and there were only three channels. But this says nothing about my biological age.

    Biological age is complex. It’s an estimate of how you compare to others, physiologically. It’s often thought to follow a bell curve around chronological age, but I don’t believe that’s accurate anymore. Advances in healthcare have extended both health-span and life-span. Importantly, different parts of our bodies age at different rates, making it hard to define anyone by a single number. For a board member, cognitive function is far more important than the ability to lift weights.

    Yet the world still runs on chronological age. For example, I can’t get a mortgage in Italy, where I now live, because of my age. No test of ability will change that. It’s understandable that things like life insurance or driver’s licenses must rely on averages, but I don’t think that should apply to things like board positions.

    Intel, where I served as a corporate officer, had a policy that management board members had to retire at 65, and corporate officers could not be older than that. That included people like Gordon Moore, Andy Grove, and Les Vadasz. Outside independent directors could not be older than 72. This meant losing those with the greatest experience and wisdom. It didn’t seem to work out so well for Intel.

    I believe I still have much to offer. I shouldn’t let my perception of how others might view me affect how I view myself. While ageism is real, I at least have control over how one person sees me—me!

  • Intel Capital: A Financial Success and a Strategic Failure-A Point of View from the Co-Founder

    When Les Vadasz and I started Intel Capital in 1991 (I had already been doing minority investments since 1988), we had three objectives:

    1. Provide strategic insight that would support the long-term plans of the company
    2. Grow the current business
    3. Realize an adequate financial return

    We believed, correctly, that by working with early-stage companies we could gather important insight into future opportunities and challenges. That part was true, but our inability to use this information to inform Intel’s long term plans meant that little strategic value was actually received.

    We were definitely able to help grow the current business. The example I like to use (probably because I led this activity) was driving the creation of residential broadband, which played an extremely important role in making the personal computer the interactive device in the home.

    We wanted to get a good enough return that we would not be constantly under the eye of the finance people. Instead, we made billions and became one of the most successful venture groups in the world and the leader in corporate venture capital.

    Les and I did not think of ourselves as venture capitalists. We originally called the group Corporate Business Development (CBD). Les Vadasz’s title was Senior Vice President and Director of Corporate Development, while my title was Vice President of Business Development.

    CBD was rebranded as Intel Capital after I left in 1999. I think the focus of Intel Capital really changed when Arvind Sodhani took the helm in 2005. Prior to that, Arvind was Intel’s Treasurer.  While he had a strong background in finance he had no understanding of technology. 

    In the 90s, Les and I  recognized the importance of the Internet, but Intel was stuck in the PC era and would not change. It pretty much missed every major change in the computer industry since.

    One of the lessons I learned from both my time at Digital Equipment Corporation and then Intel is that it is more important what you do in the good days than how you react to the bad days that follow. Thinking that today will last forever is the curse of successful companies.  I fear that Apple is now in the mode.  

    The latest  major change in the computer industry that Intel missed was AI and its relationship to GPUs (graphics processors). In addition, the company, which had been the leader in semiconductor process technology, lost that leadership position.

    I wonder if the old CBD would have seen it coming. I am sure that even if we did, we would have had no impact on the company’s strategy. Andy Grove set into motion a series of increasingly poor choices in CEOs. Not one of them had a strategic bone in their bodies.

    Let’s hope the new guy, Lip-Bu Tan, can figure out what to do to save Intel—if it can be saved.

    In the meantime, Intel is spinning out Intel Capital as an independent entity. Just what the world needs: another venture capital firm.

  • Formerly, the Former Avram Miller

    Turning 80

    Turning 80 last month was not easy for me. I used to be the youngest person | in the room. Now I am the oldest. Once, I was a child prodigy. Now I am an elderly man who gets seats offered to him when he rides the metro. 

    Frankly, I am struggling to deal with my age and the issues related to it. It is mostly psychological but not completely.

    In 1999, I left Intel, where I was Vice President of Corporate Business Development and the co-founder of Intel Capital. I am best known for these roles, as well as being a key driver in establishing the residential broadband infrastructure that became so instrumental in creating today’s consumer internet.  I did important work which was valued then; this is now.  We are entering into a period of increased longevity.   The percent of people over the age of 80 in the USA has increased from 2.3% in 1980 to 3.7 in 2020, a more than 60% increase. This increase is expect to continue.  I don’t want to forecast much into the future because we do not know what kind of advances will be made in health care.  But most of us are not prepared for life after 80.  Also, most people that age have health problems that impact there lives.  Less than 25% are still 100% fit.  I fall into that category at least for now.  For most of my life, i was focused on the future including my own future.  Now I need to live in the present.  That is where I am struggling.  If I could just focus on the present without concern about the future.  My present is really very good.  I live well and have an amazing relationship with my wife.   

    My past is disappearing 

    At its height, Intel was one of the top ten companies in the world. That is when I walked out. When I resigned, the market cap of the company was about $250 billion. It would grow to almost $500 billion at its peak a year later. Since I thought that Intel had some room for appreciation, I hedged my stock and sold it right at the peak. In 2003, Forbes placed me in the 8th position on its Midas List of the top venture investors.

    My decision to leave Intel was based on several factors. Not only did I not see a continuing role for myself, but I also had serious concerns about Intel’s future, which sadly proved to be correct. I  no longer wanted to work for a company. I wanted to be on my own. I wanted to see what I could accomplish without Intel at my back. 

    In 1996, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. It was treated using a new technique called brachytherapy (using radioactive seeds that are implanted directly into the prostate). I chose that method on the advice of Andy Grove, who did the same thing a year before me. Unfortunately, I had a reaction that was later identified as a PSA bounce, a phenomenon not recognized until several years after my treatment. It occurred in younger men (prostate cancer affects men as they age, and a 51-year-old like me was considered a young man). Instead of my PSA (the marker for prostate cancer) going down, it started to go up. It looked like my cancer had metastasized. My doctor said, “Well, at least it’s not going up quickly,” and then, of course, it started going up quickly. It was a very stressful time for me, to say the least.  A number of doctors told me that it had metastasized.  One even said that I probably had 5-10 years to enjoy my life. 

    It was then that I decided I would think about my future assuming that I only had ten years more to live. Prior to the cancer, I had been planning on starting a private equity firm with my friend Dave Roux of Oracle, but that no longer fit into my ten-year “rule.” He went on to found Silver Lake Partners. I became a limited partner.

    I was just 54 years old when I left Intel. With my experience and successful track record at Intel Capital, it would have been natural to start a venture capital firm, but I never actually thought of myself as a venture capitalist. Rather, I thought of myself as an activist strategist, and I wanted to help a few companies develop their strategic plans. Fortunately, I was financially comfortable and did not have to be concerned about adding to my wealth. I served on a number of boards, advised investment banking firms, and invested in early-stage companies for my own account. For instance, I put together much of the first round of Oura Ring. But slowly, I began to lose interest in business. I also realized that much of my standing in the world of technology was associated with Intel and its success. I remember thinking that the half-life of a technology strategist was about a year. The result is less than 1% after ten years.

    It was then that I started to jokingly refer to myself as “The Former Avram Miller.” For the longest time, I could explain that I had been an executive at Intel and founded its very successful venture arm, Intel Capital and people would be impressed.  Now, Intel is seen as a failing company. Intel Capital is a shadow of what it was in my time and is in the process of being spun out as a separate entity with a new name. A big part of my identity has  been eroded.

    From a ten year horizon to a five year horizon

    Fortunately, I am in good physical and mental health. But at my age, how long will this continue? So now I have revised the time horizon for decisions. I make life decisions assuming I have only five years. When I had a horizon of ten years, I felt that I had a lot of time to make things happen, but with five years, I have my doubts.

    I no longer want to be on boards, and it is unlikely that any board would want me at this age. I am happy to advise entrepreneurs, but this results in at most a few hours of engagement a week.

    I am still able to keep up with the key developments in technology. I have returned to my first career, which was in medical science. But I want  to transition to something I can do all by myself. I wrote a memoir called The Flight of a Wild Duck, which was published in 2022. It took three years and was, all in all, a good experience. I am considering writing another book, but perhaps this time it will be a work of fiction. I like the idea of creating something out of nothing. It was what I did when I was programing computer and composing music.

    But right now, I feel lost. Saying this probably makes some people uncomfortable. I guess you are not supposed to say that kind of thing. However, I have always been able to share my feelings, and I think it may be valuable to others who are having some of the same experiences.

    The depressing state of the world

    To make things even more complex, the world situation is creating a great deal of instability and uncertainty, which is also impacting me like so many. We moved out of Israel just before the Oct. 7th war. We traveled for a while before moving to Amsterdam while we thought about where we would want to settle longer term. Eventually, we decided to move to Italy, where we are now living. We are studying Italian. This will be my fourth language. I am hoping I will love it.  I was never able to master my third language, Hebrew.  

    We do not age uniformly

    Health is a consideration. Our bodies do not age uniformly. So while I may look sixty-five to some, I know that my hearing and sight are not sixty-five. I struggle to see my  computer screen as I write this post. I have trouble understanding people in noisy environments. I have arthritis in my hands, which makes it difficult for me to play the piano with the same level of energy as in the past. At some point, I will probably have one or more chronic diseases and have to spend a lot of time dealing with that. This is not something to look forward to.

    When I see people my age whom I have not seen in a while, I am stunned by how they look. The beautiful girl that I met and loved when she was 16 is now a senior citizen.  My oldest son is older than I was when I left Intel. Three of my four grandsons are adults. Every year, a few friends die. Many just disappear. Perhaps they are struggling with some of the same things that confront me now.

    I need some reprograming

    For the first time in my life, I have bouts of depression. If I say anything about this, people start worrying about me because of the suicide that runs in my family. But I think it is better to own up to it. I hope it does not get worse.  

    Still, I am adventurous. We have traveled to twelve countries in the last year. I guess most my age would not just pick up and move to a different country which I have now done three times in the last ten years and each with a different language.  

    Fortunately, I am married to the most amazing woman, Deborah. She is my joy and blessing and more than enough reason to stay alive.