Anthony Lacavera recounts the rapid, resource-intensive scaling of a wireless business: buying $442M of spectrum in 2008, assembling a management team, hiring roughly 1,000 people and building the network in 2009 (launch Dec 2009), then scaling to $487M revenue and $80M EBITDA with ~1M customers by 2015. He frames the work as a "gargantuan program management exercise"—building a plane while it's in flight—highlighting heavy upfront capital outlay, intense hiring, and weekly operating burn.
Questions this video answers
December 2009.
$442 million.
$487 million.
$80 million.
About 1,000,000 customers.
Chapters
With December of 09, we launch, if I recall correctly, we did 800 grand in revenue, like literally two weeks of customers that we're starting to build. And then fast forward to the year before sale, 2015, seven years, we did $487 million in revenue and 80 million in EBITDA and we had a million customers and we had operating leverage. Walk us through how this business scaled. Here's how it went. I'll try to be super brief. So 2008, the bulk of the year was spent buying the spectrum. The spectrum auction took like four months. Okay. You're in a dark room, literally bidding every day on hundreds of millions of dollars worth of spectrum. Weird process, like very unique. I've not seen anything like it before. We bought $442 million worth of spectrum. So before you really have started a business, 442 million is out of the bank into the government. We got the spectrum, we get started, we build a management team in late oh eight. And then 09 was the big first build year and that was, that was maniac kind of scaling. We hired, I do say, and I think it's true, we hired about a thousand people. We, we had to do so the money for spectrum is gone, 440 million. You think about the operating burn of that hiring before you ever have a customer to build all functions within a wireless company as quick as possible, right. And then you have capex to build the network. Okay. And that's all those base stations, towers, antennas, masts, all that kind of stuff. All right. I can't remember exactly what we would have spent in the first year, but I can tell you that at the latter part of the year of 09, before we launched in Toronto and Calgary, we were burning a million a week. So we have this combined team on the ground in Canada of us and a few of the Egyptian billionaire Holdco guys that get these things started. We come together and we're like, we need a management beyond the positions we ourselves can fill. And so we go and we hire and we hire generally through our own networks, both sides. But you get a management team started and then you start a massive program management exercise by function that generally speaking, a good management team knows what to do. And you try your best to prioritize in chaos and you start building. So building is hiring a ton of people to get seats filled, to continue to expand and scale those activities. And then actually then doing the activities, I've got to go lease sites for, to put towers up. I've got to go find stores that I can sell in. I've got, like, the actual. So think of it as a gargantuan program management exercise. Building a plane while it's in flight. That's kind of how I would say it.
