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Cyber survivor

Homegrown IT whiz Alan Ramadan has ridden the crest of the IT wave and lived to tell the tale. Fellow Monash graduate AMANDA GOME reports.

Entrepreneurs are known for their dizzy optimism and blue sky projections. Yet even the upbeat Alan Ramadan was amazed when in 1999 his three-year-old company, Quokka Sports, was listed on the NASDAQ in the US with a market capitalisation nudging $2 billion.

IT guru and Monash graduate Alan Ramadan has learnt from the demise of his start-up IT company Quokka Sports and says IT people need to think like business people to succeed.

Time magazine included him in its top 50 digital cyber elite. Ramadan's vision was to provide internet viewers with coverage of sporting events such as mountain climbing, sailing, car racing and the Olympic Games.

Alongside the actual coverage, extensive use was made of voice, text, audio-location, email messages, timing statistics and analysis of performance. New technology would open up more possibilities to engage the viewer.

Two years later, it had all gone. In April 2001, the company filed for Chapter 11 -America's equivalent of voluntary receivership. In retrospect, Ramadan says, hype got in the way of basic economics and knowledge of human behaviour.

While the company's production costs were high, consumer uptake of the web product was slow. Eventually, advertising dried up and profits were non-existent.

"We were too early for the marketplace, and the business model could not have survived the length of this current downturn," says Ramadan.

Yet, unlike many Silicon Valley victims, Ramadan did not come home - and he is no longer a victim. In fact, in September last year he took on a new role as senior vice- president of marketing at software company Macromedia, one of the world's top 10 global software companies. One of its products, Flash, is installed in 98 per cent of computers worldwide. Ramadan was a board member and consultant at Macro-media before accepting the new position.

Ramadan says he is torn between the two countries. "I would like to come home but there is still too much to learn." That includes assisting Australian graduates to seize the opportunities that still exist in Silicon Valley.

And how does Ramadan see the future of the IT industry, both globally and locally?

"While money has dried up for early stage ventures, the IT industry is still enormously important," he says. "IT is a strategic element in every business.

"This means that IT has to be connected to the real business of business - IT people have to be business people, too. The challenge for the IT industry will be to become a vital part of business, as opposed to an R&D lab which creates cool technology divorced from the needs of business."

Author info
Amanda Gome (BA, 1987) is emerging companies editor at BRW magazine, specialising in innovation, company creation and growth. She was formerly a business writer at the Herald, Sunday Herald and Herald-Sun.

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