Money from Thin Air: The Story of Craig McCaw, the Visionary who Invented the Cell Phone Industry, and His Next Billion-Dollar Idea

by O. Casey Corr

From Jay Gould to John D. Rockefeller to Bill Gates, the titans who change the world have set themselves apart by seizing the high ground before anyone else even knew it existed. Gutsy, shrewd, and ruthless, they were, above all, visionaries who saw whole new industries where others saw only chaos. Today, another visionary is seizing control of the vast new world of telecommunications, an elusive entrepreneur named Craig McCaw. Money from Thin Air is the story of how he created a new industry literally from thin air, and how he will do it again.

Journalist O. Casey Corr vividly portrays here for the first time how McCaw created a cellular communications empire from the disarray of his father's failed cable business and went on to sell it to AT&T in 1993 for a stunning $12.6 billion. And he shows how McCaw is now creating another new industry that could dwarf the accomplishments of Gates and Rockefeller put together, an "Internet in the Sky" that will provide high-speed data access to any point in the world. Most of all, Corr captures the heart of a new kind of executive -- mercurial, brilliant, extremely flexible, always entreprenurial -- who is changing the way business works forever.
A Leadership Style for the Twenty-first Century : McCaw's radically different approach to management--based on hard-nosed negotiation, shrewd borrowing, and a rare willingness to change business plans on a dime--is the new model for anyone who wants to survive, let alone thrive, in the new economy. This book shows how McCaw's unique management style evolved by instinct and from periods of intense personal reflection and self-scrutiny.
Insight into the Emerging New Media Landscape : Today, the telecom world is in turmoil. Giant companies are vulnerable because of their entrenchment in old technology and high cost. So they merge; bigger must be better. At a different level, start-ups tap new pools of capital and maneuver to exploit opportunities created by stumbling giants and collapsing regulation. Increasingly, it's a game for the nimble and the daring. The telecommunications world has come around to Craig McCaw's way of business.
An Amazing Life : Rarely does a family make and remake a fortune. Craig McCaw's father literally ran his multimillion-dollar radio and television business out of his hat, and when he died suddenly at an early age, the family's bank declared the estate insolvent. McCaw, then only twenty years old, rejected the advice of more experienced businessmen and began investing the money he got from his father's life insurance in a series of businesses most thought worthless, or at best, extremely risky. His career since then has been a series of increasingly large-scale ventures based on a unique personal vision of an emerging human society in which all of us will be freed by technology.
The Next Big Thing : McCaw made one fortune in cable TV and another in cellular telephones. Now he's building a telecommunications empire of staggering potential through a collection of companies he Teledesic, a satellite partnership with Microsoft's Bill Gates that is building a global "Internet in the Sky"; Nextlink, a company positioning itself to rival the Baby Bells with its own vast network of fiber-optic cable and switching systems; CablePlus, a company that provides voice service, Internet access, and TV signals through coaxial cable; and Nextel, an international wireless-telephone company with an expanding role in data services. Each company alone is breathtaking in its ambition, hunger for capital, and risk-taking management style. Together, they provide a glimpse at the depth of McCaw's one company capable of providing high-speed data access to any point in the world.

Odd, mysterious, yet public-spirited, McCaw is a technological visionary who sees profit where others see thin air. His amazing, ongoing story is required reading for anyone wanting to understand what it takes to build an industry from scratch -- twice.

Genres: History

310 pages, Hardcover

First published June 13, 2000

Reviews

[Hbombme · Rating 5 out of 5]

At its core, this is an outstanding history of the earlier innings in the cellular telecom industry told as a business biography of one of its participants -- Craig McCaw. Much like the cable co industry, where this book begins and where this operator earned his chops, the role of debt and smart financing to help scale those businesses is notable. Moreover, just the discussion about the early auction dynamics for the cellular spectrum makes this book a worthwhile read, but there is so much more to it... It's a great primer on how traditional incumbents, in part thanks to some regulatory barriers, lost the initiative to the more shrewd operators, and in the end capitulated by acquiring most of them.

"Never go through the front door unless you've got a back door, and the hardest thing to get people to do is to not commit themselves to one course of action... if you take a chance, always have a back door."
"A lot of people think that a highly leveraged company is an out-of-control company. What they don't understand oftentimes is that the companies that are highly leveraged have the most control."
"Hire invigorating, dangerous, and interesting people who are not all the same, and who cause trouble, because that's how you get things done."

[Shan P S · Rating 4 out of 5]

The cellphone industry was the basis of the tech boom we see starting in the 2010s. Before the apps and the smartphone, in the 1990s the cellphone with voice communication was the modern, futuristic gadget that allowed people the freedom to move anywhere and still be in touch with their family and work. This paved way for the data based mobile applications that came later - social media, e-commerce, etc.

This is a history of Craig McCaw and the early days of cellular technology in America during the 1990s. The book is centered around Craig McCaw and the way he builds his communications empire (cable, cellphone, broadband, etc).

I get the impression that the book is positively biased in its coverage of Craig McCaw, ascribing every success as a result of his skill, even calling him the "visionary who invented the cellphone industry". I am not sure if that is correct, since there were other players in the industry.

However, it is a great account of how the cellphone industry was started, and the major players involved. It is interesting to read it in 2024 and see how the industry has evolved after it was written (2000).