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Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.

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Speaker 1: I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer

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Speaker 1: at how stuff Works and I love all things tech.

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Speaker 1: And in my last episode, I covered the founding of

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Speaker 1: Cisco Systems, a company associated primarily with routers and switches

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Speaker 1: and other computer network hardware. Today, I'm going to look

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Speaker 1: more at where the company went after the co founders

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Speaker 1: left the company, and also talk a bit about some

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Speaker 1: of the technologies that the company got involved in. Now,

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Speaker 1: the early years of Cisco focused on just a few products,

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Speaker 1: from network boards that could allow computers to interface with

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Speaker 1: larger networks to the routers that could actually facilitate communication

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Speaker 1: between networks. In the mid to late nineteen eighties, this

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Speaker 1: was cutting edge technology. Computer networks were just beginning to

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Speaker 1: expand beyond tech companies and universities and start to enter

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Speaker 1: into other industries, and demand was growing around the world,

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Speaker 1: not just in the United States. By when the co founders,

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Speaker 1: Lynn Bozak and Sandy Lerner, then husband and wife, left Cisco,

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Speaker 1: the company was generating an annual revenue of sixty nine

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Speaker 1: million dollars and had two d fifty one employees and

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Speaker 1: had obviously grown quite a bit since its launch as

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Speaker 1: a business out of the founders living room, and obviously

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Speaker 1: it was no longer operating out of their living room.

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Speaker 1: They had an office in Menlo Park at the time.

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Speaker 1: The company had also gone public with stocks trading on

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Speaker 1: the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, and in ninetee Cisco Systems. Under

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Speaker 1: the guidance of John Mortgage, the new president and CEO,

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Speaker 1: who had been put in place by the UH investment

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Speaker 1: firm Sequoia Capital. He had been there since nineteen he

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Speaker 1: opened up their first international office in the UK. The

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Speaker 1: company also had its first stock split in just one

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Speaker 1: year after it got listed on the stock exchange. So

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Speaker 1: here's a quick refresher. What the heck is a stock split?

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Speaker 1: What does that mean? So a company issues a certain

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Speaker 1: number of shares and this represents a percentage of ownership

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Speaker 1: in the company. Right, If you buy shares in the company,

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Speaker 1: you own a part of that company. The number of

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Speaker 1: shares determines how much of that company you own. So

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Speaker 1: if a company puts out a whole lot of shares

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Speaker 1: and you buy only one, you have a very tiny

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Speaker 1: percentage of ownership. In that company, the shares are worth

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Speaker 1: a certain amount each. Right, that's what we see when

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Speaker 1: we say the stock is twenty dollars. That tells you

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Speaker 1: how much it a single share of stock in that

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Speaker 1: company costs. UH. That amount is determined by lots of

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Speaker 1: different factors, especially when you are first launching a company,

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Speaker 1: Like how do you determine how much you're going to

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Speaker 1: charge for a share of stock in your company if

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Speaker 1: you have not yet launched an UH initial public offering? Well,

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Speaker 1: get lots of different factors that figured that out, including

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Speaker 1: underwriters who judge what the value of the company should be.

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Speaker 1: For simplicity's sake, let's take a very easy example, one

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Speaker 1: that would never really happen, but just to be able

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Speaker 1: to talk about this. So, let's say I am launching

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Speaker 1: a company, and I've determined that my company is worth

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Speaker 1: about a thousand dollars, you know, princely some I decide

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Speaker 1: I'm going to go public with this very prestigious company,

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Speaker 1: and my underwriters decide that the one hundred shares I

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Speaker 1: plan to create will cost ten dollars each. They agree

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Speaker 1: my company is worth one thousand dollars. So UH, one

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Speaker 1: of my company will cost you ten bucks. Right, because

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Speaker 1: I have a hundred shares ten dollars of share. That

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Speaker 1: means that you know, that's all you're gonna get is

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Speaker 1: just those hundred shares um and that that's the whole

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Speaker 1: value of the company. So I keep fifty one of

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Speaker 1: those shares because I'm no dummy. I want to have

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Speaker 1: controlling interest in my own company. And the other forty

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Speaker 1: nine shares hit the market at ten dollars each. Then

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Speaker 1: the market decides whether or not those shares are actually

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Speaker 1: worth the ten dollars, and people either buy them or

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Speaker 1: they don't. Now, let's flash forward a year. Let's say

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Speaker 1: that the stock price has gone way up. Now it's

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Speaker 1: a hundred dollars per shared. It started out ten dollars

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Speaker 1: per share on the I p O. A year later,

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Speaker 1: they're valued at a hundred dollars per share. There's still

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Speaker 1: a hundred shares out there, but that means my one

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Speaker 1: thousand dollar company is now worth ten thousand dollars. Right.

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Speaker 1: I take that same number of shares that exist, that's

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Speaker 1: one hundred times the price one hundred dollars. This gives

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Speaker 1: me the market capitalization of the company. Now, it's awesome

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Speaker 1: that my company has increased in value like this, But

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Speaker 1: I would kind of like to see more trading happen

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Speaker 1: in the market, more liquidity, right, I want to see

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Speaker 1: people actually buying and selling these shares more frequently. And

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Speaker 1: at a hundred dollars per share, all investors might feel

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Speaker 1: pushed out. They feel like that's too expensive to buy

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Speaker 1: any shares really worthwhile. So my board decides that we're

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Speaker 1: going to do a stock split. We're gonna do a

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Speaker 1: two for one stock split. That means for every outstanding

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Speaker 1: share of stock, I will create another share and issue

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Speaker 1: it to the people who are holding those shares. So

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Speaker 1: if you are currently holding two shares in my company,

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Speaker 1: you would now hold four shares in my company. However,

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Speaker 1: I can't just magically double the value of my company, right.

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Speaker 1: I can't sit there and say, well, I had a

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Speaker 1: hundred shares at a hundred dollars, now I've got two

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Speaker 1: hundred shares at a hundred dollars. That doesn't work that way.

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Speaker 1: So all shareholders would see the number of shares double,

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Speaker 1: but the value per share would be cut in half.

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Speaker 1: So instead of having two shares worth a hundred dollars each,

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Speaker 1: you would now have four shares worth fifty dollars each,

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Speaker 1: but the lower cost per share might mean greater liquidity

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Speaker 1: and trading. That might encourage smaller investors to get involved,

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Speaker 1: and that can sometimes help a company grow even more.

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Speaker 1: Companies like Cisco have had numerous stock splits, and I'll

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Speaker 1: talk more about the result of that at the end

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Speaker 1: of this episode. I just wanted to mention that it

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Speaker 1: was impressive that a company would hold a split only

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Speaker 1: a year after getting listed on the stock exchange. When

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Speaker 1: Cisco Systems first went public, it had the market capitalization

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Speaker 1: of two four million dollars. So, in other words, you

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Speaker 1: took all the shares of Cisco that existed, you multiplied

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Speaker 1: it by the price per share, you get up two

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Speaker 1: four million dollars. That's how much the market cap is

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Speaker 1: for Cisco when it launches in Just a year later,

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Speaker 1: that market cap was already one billion dollars. In ninety two,

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Speaker 1: Cisco was awarded its first patent, which was originally filed

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Speaker 1: back in Because patent applications can take a while, the

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Speaker 1: patent office takes a while to review a patent and

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Speaker 1: then uh issue a patent. It was US Patent number

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Speaker 1: five million, eighty eight thousand, thirty two That patent was

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Speaker 1: for technology called the Interior Gateway Routing Protocol or i

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Speaker 1: g RP. That was a set of rules that routers

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Speaker 1: would follow for efficient communications within a computer network, peaking

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Speaker 1: ahead for a moment. In the summer of ten, Cisco

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Speaker 1: would celebrate getting its ten thousand US patent. But to

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Speaker 1: be clear, Cisco also grew quite a bit through acquisitions.

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Speaker 1: Uh Primarily, Cisco grew by acquiring other companies, so I

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Speaker 1: imagine many of those patents were part of acquisitions and

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Speaker 1: not just patents that were filed by Cisco R and D.

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Speaker 1: Cisco also opened offices in Canada and Japan in n

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Speaker 1: and hit revenues of three one million dollars and grew

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Speaker 1: to eight hundred seventy five employees. Now, from this point forward,

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Speaker 1: I'm only going to mention revenues and employee counts when

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Speaker 1: it's particularly notable, since a lot of Cisco's history is

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Speaker 1: all about it got bigger that year, and that gets

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Speaker 1: really old, really fast, So I'm not going to do

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Speaker 1: that for every single year. In ninety three, Cisco Systems

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Speaker 1: made its first acquisition. It was a company called Crescendo Communications,

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Speaker 1: and Crescendo was working on network switching technologies, particularly for

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Speaker 1: local area networks. The acquisition cost nearly nine million dollars,

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Speaker 1: and again, if I were to list every single company

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Speaker 1: Cisco Systems purchased from that time up to present day,

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Speaker 1: it would probably take about twenty minutes to do. Most

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Speaker 1: of them were companies that focused on technologies relating to networks,

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Speaker 1: so within Cisco's wheelhouse, they were largely companies that made

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Speaker 1: routers or switches, or modems or firewalls. Others, however, were

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Speaker 1: in related fields like computer security. There was even a

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Speaker 1: couple of companies that were related to Internet television, back

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Speaker 1: when everyone was convinced that was right around the corner,

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Speaker 1: when in reality, it would take you know, a decade

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Speaker 1: or two after that acquisition for any sort of Internet

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Speaker 1: TV to kind of take off, and even then it

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Speaker 1: was a totally different UH implementation than what people had

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Speaker 1: imagined back in the nineties. Cisco would also acquire companies

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Speaker 1: in the mobile space, also in surveillance, in voice over

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Speaker 1: Internet protocol, in digital cable, and more even in consumer electronics.

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Speaker 1: More recently, the company has invested heavily in cloud computing infrastructure.

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Speaker 1: So in all, Cisco has spent around seventy billion dollars

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Speaker 1: in acquisitions, and most of the products Cisco offers comes

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Speaker 1: out of those acquisitions, So you could say a lot

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Speaker 1: of Cisco's growth came from buying out other companies and

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Speaker 1: adding to their own offerings. That way, John Mortgage and

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Speaker 1: his successor, John Chambers both used acquisitions as a means

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Speaker 1: for growth. According to a two thousand two Business Week article,

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Speaker 1: acquisitions accounted for about fifty of all Cisco's businesses. Cisco's

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Speaker 1: uh moves also meant that it maintained a dominant position

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Speaker 1: in business to business enterprise, and it focused on network technology.

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Speaker 1: It was the dominant player in that space. If you

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Speaker 1: planned to build out a computer network, chances are you

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Speaker 1: were relying at least in part on technology from Cisco.

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Speaker 1: This included Internet service providers, so we started seeing more

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Speaker 1: and more Internet service getting rolled out to the United

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Speaker 1: States population. Those network infrastructure pieces had to come from somewhere.

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Speaker 1: Cisco provided a lot of the routers and switches that

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Speaker 1: would be used by Internet service providers in their various networks,

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Speaker 1: so it was a lucrative source of revenue for the company. Now,

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Speaker 1: to be clear, the acquisitions were likely necessary to some extent.

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Speaker 1: Cisco had built much of its business early on on

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Speaker 1: multi protocol routers. If you listen to my last episode,

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Speaker 1: you know what I mean by that. Those are the

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Speaker 1: routers that can communicate between different networks that are operating

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Speaker 1: on incompatible communications protocols. But by the nineties a lot

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Speaker 1: of that was changing. Most networks were starting to rely

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Speaker 1: upon Internet Protocol as the standard in communications, so you

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Speaker 1: weren't seeing as much proprietary approaches. Everyone was kind of

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Speaker 1: leaning towards Internet Protocol because that was clearly going to

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Speaker 1: become a dominant means of communication through computer systems, and

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Speaker 1: that made multi protocol routers less important because really only

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Speaker 1: legacy systems were dependent upon them. Newer systems were adopting

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Speaker 1: Internet Protocol, so you didn't need something that was multi protocol.

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Speaker 1: It's like you don't need a translator if everybody in

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Speaker 1: the room speaks the same common language. So without diversifying,

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Speaker 1: Cisco could have been in danger of becoming obsolete. So

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Speaker 1: these acquisitions were actually not a bad thing, But there

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Speaker 1: is this sort of view among certain people that a

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Speaker 1: company growing by acquiring other companies is kind of sort

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Speaker 1: of cheating. It's like the pay to win philosophy and games. Uh,

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Speaker 1: according to some people. Sometimes I feel that way. I'm

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Speaker 1: not gonna lie. Sometimes I look at a company that

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Speaker 1: makes most of its growth through acquisitions and I think, really,

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Speaker 1: but it's a smart business move. It makes sense, and

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Speaker 1: for Cisco, it paid off in huge dividends for at

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Speaker 1: least the near term. Now back to the history of

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Speaker 1: the company. While he gobbled up other companies, Cisco also

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Speaker 1: opened up more operations around the world like Hong Kong, Mexico,

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Speaker 1: and Belgium, and it would continue to open up offices

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Speaker 1: all across the world. By the company hit revenues of

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Speaker 1: more than a billion dollars for the first time in

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Speaker 1: its history, and they also moved offices from Menlo Park

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Speaker 1: to San Jose, California, And a year later the company

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Speaker 1: posted a revenue of two point to three billion. So

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Speaker 1: they go from a billion to two point to three billion.

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Speaker 1: They double their revenue in a year, and it was

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Speaker 1: like the company had a license to print money. But

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Speaker 1: remember this is also a time when people in general

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Speaker 1: Early nineties. That's when your average person starts to hear

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Speaker 1: Most people before the early nineties had no inkling, and

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Speaker 1: it was around this time where people were saying like,

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Speaker 1: what does the AT symbol in an email mean? What

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Speaker 1: does this Worldwide Web? What does this Information super Highway?

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Speaker 1: This was a boom time for network technology. Was also

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Speaker 1: when John Chambers would become the new CEO of Cisco

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Speaker 1: and John Mortgridge would transition to the role of Chairman

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Speaker 1: of the board. I'll talk more about Chambers in just

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Speaker 1: a moment, but first let's take a quick break to

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Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. John Chambers had earned a Master's of

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Speaker 1: Business administration from Indiana University. He had worked for IBM

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Speaker 1: in their sales department in the late seventies and early

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, and then went on to work for Wang Laboratories,

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Speaker 1: makers of the Whang compute or Wong if you want

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Speaker 1: to use the correct pronunciation, I would say this was

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Speaker 1: in the late eighties. This was a computer company that

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Speaker 1: one time was extremely successful. A lot of people haven't

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Speaker 1: really heard about Wong or Wang computers these days because

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Speaker 1: they were again sort of a business to business company.

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Speaker 1: But by the time Chambers left the company in nineteen ninety,

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Speaker 1: Wong was already on a downward spiral and it would

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Speaker 1: eventually declare bankruptcy. It would emerge from bankruptcy, it would

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Speaker 1: then get acquired, and ultimately it would end up dissolving

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Speaker 1: after a couple more acquisitions. Maybe someday I'll do a

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Speaker 1: full episode to talk about the history of that company. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: by that time, John Chambers was already part of Cisco.

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Speaker 1: He had joined that team officially in nine and he

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Speaker 1: would serve as the Cisco CEO for two decades. He

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Speaker 1: would stay on a CEO until July two thousand, fifteen,

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Speaker 1: and a lot happened in those two decades. So Chamber

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Speaker 1: serves as the new CEO of Cisco and its business

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Speaker 1: as usual, meaning the company is continuing to grow and

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Speaker 1: acquire other companies. This was a time when people began

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Speaker 1: to get incredibly excited about the potential of the Internet

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Speaker 1: the mid to late nineties. Startups were beginning to bloom

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Speaker 1: in the mid nineties, but that would really build to

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Speaker 1: a fever pitch by the end of the nineties. It

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Speaker 1: got crazy. The Information super Highway was being hailed as

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Speaker 1: the next frontier. It was where people were going to

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Speaker 1: make their fortune. It was a land grab of massive scale.

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Speaker 1: It was where we were all going to live, and

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Speaker 1: we were going to have experiences in virtual environments that

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Speaker 1: would let us work and shop and play and experienced

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Speaker 1: life in a way we just could not imagine before

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Speaker 1: the Internet, Or at least that's how it was all

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Speaker 1: sold to us. No one was really sure how it

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Speaker 1: was actually gonna shake out, but they were all sure

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Speaker 1: that it would lead to this amazing virtual future. And Cisco,

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Speaker 1: a comedy that continued to supply the technology that made

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Speaker 1: Internet connect communication possible, was profiting from this excitement in

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Speaker 1: a very real way. More companies were building up networks

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Speaker 1: that meant they needed the equipment that Cisco produced in

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Speaker 1: order to do that. Uh, they were going to Cisco

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Speaker 1: primarily because it was the biggest name out there. It

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Speaker 1: was the dominant manufacturer of various network components like routers

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Speaker 1: and switches, so if you needed to build out your network,

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Speaker 1: chances are you were going with Cisco hardware. They needed

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Speaker 1: to establish safe networks, they had an air gap between

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Speaker 1: the network and the Internet, so they would go with

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Speaker 1: the best, biggest name in the industry. They needed the

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Speaker 1: hardware that Cisco was known for, and the company was

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Speaker 1: doing business like gang busters. In Fortune magazine would list

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Speaker 1: Cisco among the Fortune five Companies list at number three

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Speaker 1: thirty two. But in just a couple of years, Cisco

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Speaker 1: would become the most valuable company in the world tech company,

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Speaker 1: that is, for a short while anyway, Cisco first started

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Speaker 1: offering cable modems for end users. This is one of

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Speaker 1: the few products the company made for home consumers as

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Speaker 1: opposed to enterprises. So they entered the consumer market in

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Speaker 1: a limited way, uh and experimented with this for a

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Speaker 1: little more than a decade, and Cisco would later purchase

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Speaker 1: companies like links Is in two thousand three to increase

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Speaker 1: this offering. Links Is makes routers home routers that kind

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Speaker 1: of thing and had existed before Cisco came along. Then

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Speaker 1: Cisco lumps links us and under its wing. However, Cisco

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Speaker 1: would not hold on to all these consumer facing companies

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Speaker 1: like links Is, which Cisco sold to Belcan in two

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Speaker 1: thousand thirteen, one decade later. In fact, at that time,

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Speaker 1: Cisco pretty much divested itself of all home market products

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Speaker 1: in general. Interesting side note by the way links Is

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Speaker 1: Cisco was founded by a married couple. This would be

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Speaker 1: Janey and Victor sal who founded links Is, which originally

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Speaker 1: had the name D E W International. And yes, the

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Speaker 1: original site for that company was in fact a garage

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Speaker 1: in California because the archetype exists for a reason. Marked

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Speaker 1: Cisco's fifteenth anniversary. It had hit revenues of twelve billion dollars.

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Speaker 1: It had grown so much through expansions and acquisitions that

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Speaker 1: now had more than twenty thousand employees, and in March

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Speaker 1: two thousand, Cisco hit its peak that it has never

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Speaker 1: met since then. Spoiler alert, Cisco's market cap, which when

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Speaker 1: it launched was two four million dollars I'll remind you,

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Speaker 1: hit five hundred fifty five point four billion dollars in

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Speaker 1: March two thousand. That meant Cisco had officially displaced Microsoft

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Speaker 1: as the most valuable company in the world. This value

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Speaker 1: was fueled again by the fervor around the Internet. Internet

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Speaker 1: service providers were furiously building out their infrastructure and relying

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Speaker 1: heavily on Cisco technologies to do so. The company was

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Speaker 1: in great shape, and then the bubble burst. Now I've

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Speaker 1: covered the dot com bubble and other episodes, so I'm

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Speaker 1: just going to kind of give a quick summary of

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Speaker 1: what happened here in the late nineties and into two thousand,

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Speaker 1: even into two thousand one, to some extent, there was

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Speaker 1: an almost unreal amount of investment pouring into internet ventures. Now,

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Speaker 1: some of those ventures would prove to be good ideas

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Speaker 1: that could stand the test of time, like Amazon that

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Speaker 1: was able to survive the dot com bubble burst. Others

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Speaker 1: were decent ideas, but the people behind them were unable

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Speaker 1: to execute those ideas the way they had envisioned, so

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Speaker 1: they weren't able to make any money off of this

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Speaker 1: cool idea. And it might be that once the bubble

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Speaker 1: did burst a few years later, someone else came along

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Speaker 1: with a similar idea and they were able to make

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Speaker 1: it work. At the time, it just didn't. Some of

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Speaker 1: the ideas were just playing bad. But around this time

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Speaker 1: in the late nineties, the general feeling was if you

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Speaker 1: did not get in on this internet craze, if you

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Speaker 1: did not put your money there, you were going to

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Speaker 1: miss out on an incredible investment opportunity. The venture capitalists

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Speaker 1: were blasting companies with huge investments. I mean, it was

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Speaker 1: almost like people were throwing money at these startup companies

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Speaker 1: they were finding themselves flush with cash. Some of them

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Speaker 1: were finding themselves in possession of way more money than

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Speaker 1: was necessary for them to actually do what it was

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Speaker 1: they said they wanted to do. And lots of startup

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Speaker 1: entrepreneurs went more than a little bonkers with all that dough.

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Speaker 1: They started tricking out their offices with lavish furniture and amenities.

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Speaker 1: They had spent huge amounts on stuff they didn't actually

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Speaker 1: need that wasn't contributing to their business at all. Some

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Speaker 1: of them didn't have a business plan to speak of.

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Speaker 1: They had a cool idea, something that sounded neat, but

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Speaker 1: they didn't have a strategy of how they were going

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Speaker 1: to even generate revenue, let alone make a profit. And

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Speaker 1: once the initial excitement started to die down, people began

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Speaker 1: to ask hard questions, like how the heck is this

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Speaker 1: company going to pay back the investment I put into it.

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Speaker 1: The market peaked in March of two thousand, fueled by

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Speaker 1: rampant speculation, and then the bubble burst. Now, why the

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Speaker 1: bubble burst is complicated, as there were there's more than

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Speaker 1: just investors waking up, right. It wasn't just people got

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Speaker 1: out of bed one day and said hang on and

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Speaker 1: then and then the balloon just totally pops. That's more

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Speaker 1: simple than what really happened. A lot of startups had

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Speaker 1: burned through their initial cash and had nothing related to

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Speaker 1: show for it except pending disaster, and the dot com

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Speaker 1: crash saw several internet startups go under just months after

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Speaker 1: they had made headlines with incredible successful I p o s.

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Speaker 1: These were companies that had failed to generate a profit, or,

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Speaker 1: like I said, in a few cases, they had failed

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Speaker 1: to make any revenue at all. While some of them

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Speaker 1: received enormous amounts of investment money, that cash was spent,

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Speaker 1: and without a steady source of incoming revenue or more investment,

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Speaker 1: those companies couldn't stay afloat, so the market retracted. Cisco

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Speaker 1: was in a different space. It was a big, established company.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't about to go out of business, but it

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Speaker 1: did take an enormous hit from this dot com bubble burst.

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Speaker 1: Its stock price declined by more than eighty percent as

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Speaker 1: a result, and the company had been on a rocket

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Speaker 1: to the stratosphere before this. A lot of people were

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Speaker 1: even predicting that Cisco was going to become the first

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Speaker 1: trillion dollar company, but it's market cap ended up going

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Speaker 1: from more than five hundred billion to one fifty one

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Speaker 1: billion in two thousand one, and it would dip even

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Speaker 1: lower in subsequent years, so it didn't go out of business,

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Speaker 1: but its value was reduced to less than half of

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Speaker 1: what it had been at its peak. By the end

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Speaker 1: of fiscal year two thousand two, Cisco stocks were trading

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Speaker 1: at around twelve dollars per share. The change from fiscal

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Speaker 1: year two thousand one to two thousand two is noticeable

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Speaker 1: if you look at timelines for Cisco, even once from

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Speaker 1: the company itself, because companies tend to not want to

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Speaker 1: draw attention to really difficult years, and they sometimes will

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Speaker 1: just they don't necessarily fudge results, but they might leave

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Speaker 1: details out. But there's an official Cisco timeline that gives

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Speaker 1: you revenue and employee count every year from its founding

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Speaker 1: up to two thousand thirteen. At the end of fiscal

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Speaker 1: year two thousand one, the company posted twenty two point

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Speaker 1: three billion dollars in revenue and they had thirty eight thousand,

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Speaker 1: four hundred two employees. One year later, that had gone

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Speaker 1: down from twenty two point three billion to eighteen point

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Speaker 1: nine billion, and there were three thousand fewer employees Around

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Speaker 1: but still, and you're talking about billions of dollars in revenue.

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Speaker 1: It's not like Cisco was suddenly on the verge of collapse.

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Speaker 1: It just was suffering a pretty big setback. But I

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Speaker 1: was able to keep its footing, and CEO Chambers concentrated

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Speaker 1: on trying to lead his company to reverse this trend

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Speaker 1: and to go back into a period of growth. But

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Speaker 1: it took a few years. Cisco revenues and employee count

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Speaker 1: remained pretty flat from two thousand two to two thousand four,

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Speaker 1: So first it was all about stabilizing the company, then

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Speaker 1: it was trying to grow it again. During that time,

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Speaker 1: Cisco was doing other business. They had gotten into the

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Speaker 1: voice over Internet phone protocol system, so they were selling

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Speaker 1: I voide phones. They had shipped four million of those

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Speaker 1: by two thousand four. It had introduced security solutions in

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Speaker 1: two thousand five, and it appeared to be on a

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Speaker 1: slow climb back to where it was now. I want

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Speaker 1: to talk a little bit more about what Cisco did

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Speaker 1: in the aftermath of the dot com bubble and what

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Speaker 1: it's doing today, But before I get into that, let's

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Speaker 1: take another quick break to thank our sponsor. Two thousand

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Speaker 1: six saw a big year of growth for Cisco. The

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Speaker 1: company was really able to get out of that rut

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Speaker 1: it was in. It was also getting into the business

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Speaker 1: of telepresence. That's, you know, the whole video calling business,

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Speaker 1: which in two thousand six was still a pretty young

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Speaker 1: science and technology. It wasn't that it was really novel.

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Speaker 1: Not a lot of people had had made use of it.

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Speaker 1: Yet these days you can have it on your smartphone.

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Speaker 1: It was still a dominant player in switches and routers

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Speaker 1: at that time, and it had grown to nearly fifty

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Speaker 1: two thousand employees, so it looked like it was well

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Speaker 1: on the way to full recovery, and it continued to

435
00:25:57,800 --> 00:26:02,080
Speaker 1: make strategic acquisitions. It also officially dropped Systems from its

436
00:26:02,160 --> 00:26:05,040
Speaker 1: name and simply became known as Cisco. They also launched

437
00:26:05,040 --> 00:26:08,680
Speaker 1: a campaign called the Human Network. This was an advertising

438
00:26:08,720 --> 00:26:11,840
Speaker 1: campaign pain to uh kind of position the company as

439
00:26:11,880 --> 00:26:14,439
Speaker 1: one that had a place in the average household, and

440
00:26:14,440 --> 00:26:17,480
Speaker 1: this was a relatively short lived attempt for Cisco to

441
00:26:17,560 --> 00:26:22,800
Speaker 1: make a bigger move into the consumer electronics market space. Ultimately,

442
00:26:23,359 --> 00:26:26,880
Speaker 1: the company would change gears and again focus on enterprise customers.

443
00:26:26,920 --> 00:26:30,080
Speaker 1: They would ultimately decide that it was a mistake to

444
00:26:30,080 --> 00:26:35,000
Speaker 1: get into consumer electronics. Now. One very disturbing story involving

445
00:26:35,040 --> 00:26:38,239
Speaker 1: Cisco around this time that first started to emerge in

446
00:26:38,280 --> 00:26:42,560
Speaker 1: the UH around two thousand eight or so and has

447
00:26:42,600 --> 00:26:48,040
Speaker 1: continued to be brought up in discussion since then, was

448
00:26:48,200 --> 00:26:52,320
Speaker 1: the company's involvement in supplying technology to China. Now, according

449
00:26:52,359 --> 00:26:57,760
Speaker 1: to allegations brought against Cisco by various human rights organizations,

450
00:26:57,800 --> 00:27:02,239
Speaker 1: Cisco was instrumental and provide fighting and customizing technology for

451
00:27:02,359 --> 00:27:07,320
Speaker 1: China's Golden Shield System. We have also called the Golden

452
00:27:07,359 --> 00:27:12,680
Speaker 1: Shield System the Great Firewall of China. The Chinese government

453
00:27:12,720 --> 00:27:15,840
Speaker 1: restricts access to the Internet, so a lot of sites

454
00:27:15,880 --> 00:27:20,800
Speaker 1: are strictly forbidden, and the Great Firewall allows the Chinese

455
00:27:20,800 --> 00:27:26,080
Speaker 1: government to essentially dictate which parts of the Internet are

456
00:27:26,080 --> 00:27:30,040
Speaker 1: are are accessible within China and which ones should not

457
00:27:30,200 --> 00:27:33,879
Speaker 1: be accessible within China. It's a very authoritarian approach to

458
00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:38,520
Speaker 1: Internet access. Now, the allegations state that Cisco provided technology

459
00:27:38,560 --> 00:27:42,800
Speaker 1: that allowed the Chinese government to identify and pursue individuals

460
00:27:42,840 --> 00:27:46,760
Speaker 1: that the government had identified as being undesirable, people that

461
00:27:47,080 --> 00:27:51,280
Speaker 1: the government had said are dangerous. That included practitioners of

462
00:27:51,320 --> 00:27:56,320
Speaker 1: the Falloon Gong religion. So, according to the allegations these

463
00:27:56,320 --> 00:28:00,560
Speaker 1: people were reportedly hunted down, captured towards, shured, and in

464
00:28:00,640 --> 00:28:06,040
Speaker 1: at least one instance killed. The lawsuits accused Cisco of

465
00:28:06,200 --> 00:28:10,240
Speaker 1: knowingly providing technology that would be used in those endeavors,

466
00:28:10,240 --> 00:28:13,440
Speaker 1: saying there's no way the company would not have known

467
00:28:14,119 --> 00:28:16,959
Speaker 1: that the tech they were designing for the Chinese government

468
00:28:17,000 --> 00:28:21,880
Speaker 1: was specifically for the purpose of the government identifying, singling out,

469
00:28:22,040 --> 00:28:27,280
Speaker 1: and pursuing specific individuals within China. The initial lawsuit was

470
00:28:27,320 --> 00:28:29,800
Speaker 1: dismissed when a judge stated the plaintiffs had failed to

471
00:28:29,840 --> 00:28:33,800
Speaker 1: provide evidence that Cisco would have known the technology would

472
00:28:33,800 --> 00:28:37,080
Speaker 1: be put to such use. The plaintiffs appealed, with oral

473
00:28:37,240 --> 00:28:41,200
Speaker 1: arguments happening in April seventeen, but then the submission of

474
00:28:41,240 --> 00:28:44,200
Speaker 1: the case was vacated, pending the judgment on a different

475
00:28:44,240 --> 00:28:46,360
Speaker 1: case that the Supreme Court was hearing. It was called

476
00:28:46,440 --> 00:28:49,320
Speaker 1: Jesner versus Air of the Bank. At issue was whether

477
00:28:49,400 --> 00:28:52,600
Speaker 1: or not foreign corporations could or could not be defendants

478
00:28:52,600 --> 00:28:56,160
Speaker 1: in suits brought under the Alien Tort Statute. The Supreme

479
00:28:56,240 --> 00:28:58,160
Speaker 1: Court found that they could not in a five to

480
00:28:58,200 --> 00:29:01,040
Speaker 1: four decision, and as far as I intel the matter

481
00:29:01,400 --> 00:29:05,880
Speaker 1: is at arrest, there that that in US courts will

482
00:29:05,920 --> 00:29:09,000
Speaker 1: not hear the case. That's my understanding. Uh, it may

483
00:29:09,080 --> 00:29:12,040
Speaker 1: turn out to be different. I am not a legal expert.

484
00:29:12,760 --> 00:29:16,120
Speaker 1: One of the ways that Cisco tried to target consumers

485
00:29:16,200 --> 00:29:20,160
Speaker 1: around this time was in the consumer video camera market.

486
00:29:20,640 --> 00:29:24,920
Speaker 1: In two thousand nine, Cisco acquired Pure Digital Technologies. That's

487
00:29:24,960 --> 00:29:27,680
Speaker 1: the company that was behind the flip video cameras. Do

488
00:29:27,680 --> 00:29:29,560
Speaker 1: you remember those? They're kind of cool. I actually kind

489
00:29:29,560 --> 00:29:32,840
Speaker 1: of thought they were neat. Uh. Cisco might have timed

490
00:29:32,960 --> 00:29:35,640
Speaker 1: that kind of poorly, because two thousand nine was right

491
00:29:35,680 --> 00:29:38,960
Speaker 1: around the time that the handheld cam quarter market was

492
00:29:39,080 --> 00:29:43,080
Speaker 1: getting pushed aside by smartphones, more of which were including

493
00:29:43,200 --> 00:29:47,280
Speaker 1: cameras capable of taking video. Cisco stuck with this plan

494
00:29:47,440 --> 00:29:52,480
Speaker 1: until April, and then it discontinued the flip video cameras

495
00:29:52,480 --> 00:29:55,800
Speaker 1: because the company was looking Cisco, that is, was looking

496
00:29:55,840 --> 00:30:00,240
Speaker 1: to extricate itself from the home consumer market entirely. The

497
00:30:00,280 --> 00:30:03,920
Speaker 1: space was too crowded with too many competitors, and many

498
00:30:03,960 --> 00:30:06,880
Speaker 1: of those competitors had been at the game for way

499
00:30:06,920 --> 00:30:09,760
Speaker 1: longer than Cisco. In fact, even longer than Cisco had

500
00:30:09,760 --> 00:30:13,560
Speaker 1: existed as a company, so things were pretty rough for Cisco.

501
00:30:13,600 --> 00:30:17,080
Speaker 1: There By two thousand eleven, other companies were also starting

502
00:30:17,080 --> 00:30:21,480
Speaker 1: to really seriously compete against Cisco in the network infrastructure

503
00:30:21,560 --> 00:30:25,120
Speaker 1: business that's the bread and butter of Cisco. At least

504
00:30:25,200 --> 00:30:27,760
Speaker 1: up to that time, Cisco was still the dominant player

505
00:30:28,040 --> 00:30:30,920
Speaker 1: that was no longer commanding nearly all the market the

506
00:30:30,960 --> 00:30:34,560
Speaker 1: way it had been. As a result, the company's earnings

507
00:30:34,600 --> 00:30:38,680
Speaker 1: were lower than what they had projected previously, and so

508
00:30:38,760 --> 00:30:41,480
Speaker 1: Cisco had to look for ways to cut costs. And

509
00:30:41,520 --> 00:30:44,880
Speaker 1: if you've worked for a big company, you probably anticipate

510
00:30:45,000 --> 00:30:49,480
Speaker 1: what happened next, because one way companies cut costs after

511
00:30:49,560 --> 00:30:53,560
Speaker 1: a rough financial year is by laying off employees. John

512
00:30:53,640 --> 00:30:57,440
Speaker 1: Chambers essentially said, I've done goofed up the Really he

513
00:30:57,880 --> 00:31:00,400
Speaker 1: was more professional than I make it sound, and it

514
00:31:00,480 --> 00:31:02,920
Speaker 1: wasn't like it was an obvious mistake on the face

515
00:31:02,920 --> 00:31:06,640
Speaker 1: of it. The problem, as Chambers admitted, was that Cisco

516
00:31:06,720 --> 00:31:09,920
Speaker 1: had tried to compete in too many markets, many of

517
00:31:09,960 --> 00:31:13,840
Speaker 1: which had entrenched players, like the home consumer market, for example.

518
00:31:14,400 --> 00:31:16,400
Speaker 1: So the company was fighting a war that had too

519
00:31:16,440 --> 00:31:19,440
Speaker 1: many fronts, and so Chamber said it was time to

520
00:31:19,480 --> 00:31:24,040
Speaker 1: simplify Cisco's approach to narrow its focus, and unfortunately that

521
00:31:24,080 --> 00:31:26,600
Speaker 1: also meant cut some jobs in the process, because those

522
00:31:26,680 --> 00:31:30,240
Speaker 1: jobs would no longer be necessary for the company's mission.

523
00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:34,120
Speaker 1: Chambers wanted to cut expenses by about six percent, but

524
00:31:34,280 --> 00:31:40,160
Speaker 1: six percent meant one billion dollars. Some analysts estimated that

525
00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:42,640
Speaker 1: could mean the company might eliminate as many as ten

526
00:31:42,720 --> 00:31:45,880
Speaker 1: thousand jobs, which would be about four percent of its workforce.

527
00:31:46,560 --> 00:31:48,160
Speaker 1: Others said it was probably going to be closer to

528
00:31:48,240 --> 00:31:52,080
Speaker 1: four thousand. Now, according to Cisco's own timeline, it looks

529
00:31:52,120 --> 00:31:54,480
Speaker 1: like the real number was somewhere in between four thousand

530
00:31:54,520 --> 00:31:57,520
Speaker 1: and ten thousand. At the end of fiscal year eleven,

531
00:31:57,520 --> 00:32:01,720
Speaker 1: the company had seventy one five employees. At the end

532
00:32:01,760 --> 00:32:05,000
Speaker 1: of the following year, it was down to sixty six thousand,

533
00:32:05,120 --> 00:32:08,240
Speaker 1: six hundred thirty nine. So, assuming some folks were brought

534
00:32:08,240 --> 00:32:11,600
Speaker 1: on throughout two thousand twelve, either through acquisitions or through hires,

535
00:32:11,840 --> 00:32:14,680
Speaker 1: that would mean around five thousand people were let go.

536
00:32:15,360 --> 00:32:17,360
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be the last time Cisco would have to

537
00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:20,600
Speaker 1: lay off a lot of people. In August, the company

538
00:32:20,640 --> 00:32:23,480
Speaker 1: announced it would eliminate five thousand, five hundred jobs, and

539
00:32:23,520 --> 00:32:27,000
Speaker 1: the following year it announced another eleven hundred positions would

540
00:32:27,000 --> 00:32:30,320
Speaker 1: be on the chopping block. Now. That was probably because

541
00:32:30,480 --> 00:32:35,640
Speaker 1: Cisco has pivoted. In recent years, the network infrastructure market

542
00:32:35,680 --> 00:32:39,760
Speaker 1: has slowed down considerably because eventually you've got enough super

543
00:32:39,840 --> 00:32:43,040
Speaker 1: highway laid down right. Internet service providers have built out

544
00:32:43,040 --> 00:32:50,280
Speaker 1: their infrastructures. They might continue to UH implement new material

545
00:32:50,360 --> 00:32:53,360
Speaker 1: into those infrastructures, but there's no longer this land grab.

546
00:32:53,480 --> 00:32:58,280
Speaker 1: There's no longer this very fast expansion of Internet infrastructure.

547
00:32:58,600 --> 00:33:02,600
Speaker 1: It's not necessary. A lot of of of organizations already

548
00:33:02,600 --> 00:33:05,560
Speaker 1: have the equipment they need. So for the last couple

549
00:33:05,560 --> 00:33:08,720
Speaker 1: of years, Cisco has had to look at a different

550
00:33:09,080 --> 00:33:13,040
Speaker 1: source for revenue, something some other area of growth. They

551
00:33:13,040 --> 00:33:17,720
Speaker 1: could still do business with network infrastructure materials, but it's

552
00:33:17,760 --> 00:33:20,920
Speaker 1: not gonna have the year over your growth that investors

553
00:33:20,960 --> 00:33:24,640
Speaker 1: want to see. So the company has switched to concentrate

554
00:33:24,680 --> 00:33:27,880
Speaker 1: more on software and cloud computing services as well as

555
00:33:27,880 --> 00:33:30,760
Speaker 1: the Internet of things. In fact, there's a pretty good

556
00:33:30,840 --> 00:33:34,440
Speaker 1: chance that the Internet of Things got its name from Cisco,

557
00:33:34,960 --> 00:33:39,240
Speaker 1: which was the organization that really recognized when individual uh

558
00:33:39,440 --> 00:33:43,680
Speaker 1: network connected components were out numbering the number of people

559
00:33:43,760 --> 00:33:47,560
Speaker 1: on the planet, saying well, we now have more devices

560
00:33:47,600 --> 00:33:50,320
Speaker 1: connected to the Internet than there are people in the world.

561
00:33:50,960 --> 00:33:53,440
Speaker 1: That happened, by the way, around two two thousand nine.

562
00:33:54,360 --> 00:33:57,400
Speaker 1: One person who left his job was John Chambers, but

563
00:33:57,560 --> 00:34:00,480
Speaker 1: that was his choice. He didn't get fired. He actually

564
00:34:00,480 --> 00:34:04,120
Speaker 1: retired as CEO in twif As I mentioned earlier, his

565
00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:08,360
Speaker 1: replacement was Chuck Robbins, the current CEO of Cisco. He

566
00:34:08,400 --> 00:34:10,960
Speaker 1: had worked for Cisco for nearly twenty years. He had

567
00:34:10,960 --> 00:34:14,880
Speaker 1: previously been the senior vice president of worldwide Operations. Now,

568
00:34:14,880 --> 00:34:17,319
Speaker 1: if you listen to my last episode, you heard me

569
00:34:17,400 --> 00:34:20,799
Speaker 1: say that a one thousand dollar investment in Cisco when

570
00:34:20,800 --> 00:34:24,279
Speaker 1: it first went public wouldn't netted you fifty five point

571
00:34:24,320 --> 00:34:27,520
Speaker 1: five five shares, which means they're around eighteen dollars per share,

572
00:34:28,120 --> 00:34:30,960
Speaker 1: which made me wonder how much would they be worth today?

573
00:34:31,160 --> 00:34:36,240
Speaker 1: So since that time, the company's shares have split multiple times,

574
00:34:36,880 --> 00:34:39,320
Speaker 1: so you have to take all that into count. Fifty

575
00:34:39,360 --> 00:34:44,480
Speaker 1: five point five five shares from would be more shares

576
00:34:44,520 --> 00:34:47,600
Speaker 1: today because they kept splitting. So how many shares would

577
00:34:47,640 --> 00:34:51,759
Speaker 1: you have today? Probably somewhere around sixteen thousand, that's how

578
00:34:51,760 --> 00:34:55,160
Speaker 1: many times it splits. Now, keep in mind a split

579
00:34:56,160 --> 00:34:59,000
Speaker 1: typically doubles the number of shares you have. Sometimes it

580
00:34:59,080 --> 00:35:00,800
Speaker 1: can be more than that, depend upon the nature of

581
00:35:00,840 --> 00:35:04,080
Speaker 1: the split. At the time I am researching this episode,

582
00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:07,480
Speaker 1: Cisco shares our price at about forty two dollars eighty

583
00:35:07,520 --> 00:35:10,200
Speaker 1: six cents per share. So if you do some multiplication,

584
00:35:10,800 --> 00:35:14,120
Speaker 1: you take your sixteen thousand, you multiply by that, that

585
00:35:14,160 --> 00:35:16,560
Speaker 1: would mean you're one thousand dollar investment way back in

586
00:35:16,640 --> 00:35:20,640
Speaker 1: nineteen nine would be worth about six hundred eighty five thousand,

587
00:35:20,760 --> 00:35:24,919
Speaker 1: seven hundred sixty dollars today. But hey, let's let's be fair.

588
00:35:25,080 --> 00:35:28,160
Speaker 1: Let's sudjust that one thousand dollars for inflation, right, because

589
00:35:28,160 --> 00:35:30,640
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars in nineteen ninety is worth more than

590
00:35:30,680 --> 00:35:33,720
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars and twenty eighteen money, So in today's

591
00:35:33,719 --> 00:35:36,560
Speaker 1: cash it would be worth about one thousand, nine hundred

592
00:35:36,600 --> 00:35:40,280
Speaker 1: seventy seven dollars ninety four cents. So let's just rounded

593
00:35:40,360 --> 00:35:42,919
Speaker 1: up to two thousand dollars. So a two thousand dollar

594
00:35:43,000 --> 00:35:48,040
Speaker 1: investment in today's buying power back in nineteen would net

595
00:35:48,080 --> 00:35:52,880
Speaker 1: you more than half a million dollars. That's after Cisco's

596
00:35:52,960 --> 00:35:55,520
Speaker 1: struggles during the dot com crash and the two thousand

597
00:35:55,600 --> 00:35:58,400
Speaker 1: eleven crisis, so that's not bad, though the company is

598
00:35:58,400 --> 00:36:00,359
Speaker 1: still a far cry from its peak you have five

599
00:36:00,760 --> 00:36:03,799
Speaker 1: billion dollars. In fact, as of the day I'm researching this,

600
00:36:03,920 --> 00:36:07,359
Speaker 1: the company has a market capitalization of one nine point

601
00:36:07,480 --> 00:36:11,239
Speaker 1: ninety three billion dollars. Still really impressive, but that's less

602
00:36:11,239 --> 00:36:14,560
Speaker 1: than half of what it was at its peak, even

603
00:36:14,600 --> 00:36:18,800
Speaker 1: before you adjust for inflation. Now, I've got another question

604
00:36:18,840 --> 00:36:21,040
Speaker 1: for you. What if you had made that one thousand

605
00:36:21,040 --> 00:36:24,919
Speaker 1: dollar investment back in nine, but then, you know, just

606
00:36:25,160 --> 00:36:30,239
Speaker 1: at the very peak of Cisco's value, you sold off

607
00:36:30,280 --> 00:36:32,960
Speaker 1: all of your your stocks. Let's say you just get

608
00:36:32,960 --> 00:36:35,920
Speaker 1: this feeling in your bones. You're like this, this is

609
00:36:35,960 --> 00:36:38,000
Speaker 1: about to take a downward turn, so I'm going to

610
00:36:38,080 --> 00:36:40,919
Speaker 1: get rid of all my stock right now. Well, if

611
00:36:40,920 --> 00:36:43,560
Speaker 1: you had done that, if you had taken that fifty

612
00:36:43,600 --> 00:36:46,759
Speaker 1: five point five five shares of stock that you bought

613
00:36:46,800 --> 00:36:49,200
Speaker 1: for one thousand dollars back in nineteen nine, and you

614
00:36:49,280 --> 00:36:53,080
Speaker 1: sold it at its peak, you would have netted one million,

615
00:36:53,200 --> 00:36:58,240
Speaker 1: two hundred sixty four thousand dollars more than a million

616
00:36:58,440 --> 00:37:01,120
Speaker 1: dollars on a thousand dollars in ustment. That would be

617
00:37:01,280 --> 00:37:06,480
Speaker 1: pretty darn suite. But that's hindsight, and hindsight is always

618
00:37:06,520 --> 00:37:09,000
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. At the time, you would not have known,

619
00:37:09,040 --> 00:37:11,200
Speaker 1: maybe you would have thought, Nope, it's on its way

620
00:37:11,200 --> 00:37:15,719
Speaker 1: to a trillion dollar company. I'm holding onto these stocks, yes, sirree. Now, ultimately,

621
00:37:16,120 --> 00:37:19,360
Speaker 1: the story of Cisco is a complicated one. It's a

622
00:37:19,360 --> 00:37:22,560
Speaker 1: company that was founded on a collaborative effort that left

623
00:37:22,560 --> 00:37:25,239
Speaker 1: a few of the collaborators upset at how their work

624
00:37:25,320 --> 00:37:28,840
Speaker 1: was leveraged for commercial products. The technology from Cisco and

625
00:37:28,880 --> 00:37:31,680
Speaker 1: the companies that acquired has made it possible for countless

626
00:37:31,680 --> 00:37:34,960
Speaker 1: other businesses and organizations to adapt the requirements of the

627
00:37:34,960 --> 00:37:37,960
Speaker 1: twenty first century. And while Cisco was blasted by the

628
00:37:38,000 --> 00:37:41,400
Speaker 1: dot com bubble bursting, it's not like it was responsible

629
00:37:41,680 --> 00:37:45,880
Speaker 1: for that mess. The company was investing billions of dollars

630
00:37:45,920 --> 00:37:49,400
Speaker 1: and acquisitions, which likely helped fuel some of the speculation

631
00:37:49,440 --> 00:37:52,319
Speaker 1: around the dot com bubble, but it wasn't engaged in

632
00:37:52,320 --> 00:37:54,840
Speaker 1: the same sort of shenanigans that ultimately led to the

633
00:37:54,840 --> 00:37:58,560
Speaker 1: bubble collapsing. They were more of a victim of that

634
00:37:58,760 --> 00:38:03,960
Speaker 1: than someone was perpetrating the mess that caused it. So

635
00:38:04,840 --> 00:38:07,120
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to lay blame at Cisco for the

636
00:38:07,160 --> 00:38:11,040
Speaker 1: dot com bubble. Far from it. Well, that wraps up

637
00:38:11,600 --> 00:38:15,080
Speaker 1: these two episodes about Cisco, where it came from what

638
00:38:15,160 --> 00:38:18,680
Speaker 1: it does and where it's headed. It's very much in

639
00:38:18,760 --> 00:38:22,080
Speaker 1: the cloud computing space and and software as a service

640
00:38:22,080 --> 00:38:26,440
Speaker 1: space these days, so very different from building network cards

641
00:38:26,480 --> 00:38:29,800
Speaker 1: and routers way back in night And of course the

642
00:38:29,840 --> 00:38:32,000
Speaker 1: co founders haven't had anything to do with the company

643
00:38:32,080 --> 00:38:35,839
Speaker 1: since nine so it's a very different company than what

644
00:38:36,480 --> 00:38:39,959
Speaker 1: was formed out of a living room in San Jose

645
00:38:40,120 --> 00:38:45,640
Speaker 1: back in the early eighties. Interesting story, lots of controversy there.

646
00:38:45,880 --> 00:38:49,080
Speaker 1: I am curious to read more about a lot of

647
00:38:49,080 --> 00:38:51,880
Speaker 1: the stories here, and maybe someday do another update, but

648
00:38:52,000 --> 00:38:54,839
Speaker 1: for now, let's close the book on Cisco. If any

649
00:38:54,920 --> 00:38:58,600
Speaker 1: of you have suggestions, like Gauge did, for any topics

650
00:38:58,640 --> 00:39:00,839
Speaker 1: I should cover on Tech Stuff, whether a company, maybe

651
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Speaker 1: it's a person in tech, maybe it's a specific technology.

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Speaker 1: Maybe there's someone you want me to interview or have

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Speaker 1: on as a guest host. Send me a message let

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Speaker 1: me know. The email for the show is tech Stuff

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Speaker 1: at how stuff Works dot com, or you can drop

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Speaker 1: me a line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle at

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Speaker 1: both of those is tech Stuff H s W. Don't

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Speaker 1: forget to follow us on Instagram and I'll talk to

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Speaker 1: you again. Release it for more on this and thousands

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Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff works? Dot com