The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving

586: Father of the Cable Modem Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard on Innovation and the Global Broadband Transformation

Sep 15, 2025

Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard, founder of LANcity and acclaimed as the 'father of the cable modem,' shares his inspiring immigrant journey and groundbreaking work in broadband technology. He reveals how he overcame skepticism and financial challenges to revolutionize the industry with his vision of high-speed connectivity. Yassini-Fard discusses the crucial importance of prototypes and execution over mere financial backing in today's tech landscape. He emphasizes the need for open standards and resilience while navigating the transformative impacts of AI on society.

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ANECDOTE

Small Team, Huge Broadband Breakthrough

Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard spent nine years and a tiny team proving that voice, data and video could travel over coax successfully.
He turned an $18,000 device into a reliable consumer product and helped create DOCSIS as a global, royalty-free standard.

INSIGHT

Execution Trumps Big Competitors

Execution, resilience and customer trials beat big valuations and PowerPoint from large incumbents.
LANcity's small, disciplined team outperformed Motorola and Intel by shipping reliable products and running relentless customer pilots.

ADVICE

Anchor Innovation To Customer Economics

Do anchor innovations to real customer economics and run pilots where users adopt because the product delivers daily value.
Do use hands-on trials to turn early users into advocates who won't give the product back.

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Rouzbeh Yassini-Fard, founder of LANcity, author of The Accidental Network, and widely known as the "father of the cable modem", shares the story of how broadband was built and the lessons it offers for today's leaders navigating AI and emerging technologies.

Arriving in the U.S. with $750 in savings, Yassini-Fard envisioned carrying "voice, data and video… over one cable instead of two" at a time when few believed homes would ever need to be connected. Over nine years, with just 13 employees and seven consultants, he built a working product, proved its reliability, and persuaded the cable industry to adopt it. By 1996, his team had driven device costs from $8,000 down to under $300 and helped create DOCSIS, the global broadband standard, released royalty-free to speed adoption.

Reflecting on today's tech landscape, he cautions: "It's not just really money… you need more than that. It's a proven prototype and a product that actually does the talking." Valuations without execution, he warns, will accelerate failure.

Key lessons include:

Prototype before scale: Capital is wasted without demonstrable performance in real environments.
Treat infrastructure as strategy: Broadband enabled Silicon Valley, Netflix, telehealth, and remote work; leaders must model today's energy, compute, and connectivity constraints when sizing AI opportunities.
Open standards matter: Royalty-free interoperability can turn a niche idea into an industry platform.
Execution trumps valuation: LANcity beat Motorola and Intel with disciplined engineering, resilient supply chains, and relentless customer trials.
Anchor to customer economics: Early users became advocates because the modem delivered day-to-day value.

Looking forward, Yassini-Fard stresses that AI and robotics will stall without addressing power and infrastructure: "For some of these AI companies to be successful, they need gigawatts of power… it takes 10 years to build a nuclear reactor that gives you one." He highlights quantum computing and network management as the next frontiers, and calls for workforce retraining in mathematics, physics, and the skilled trades that sustain digital systems.

For executives evaluating platform bets or emerging technologies, this conversation offers a grounded blueprint: start with the prototype, model the infrastructure honestly, choose standards deliberately, and align capital with execution discipline.

📚 Get Rouzbeh's book, The Accidental Network, here: https://shorturl.at/rUB1T

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