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Byline: Peter J. Howe
Mar. 26--CHELMSFORD, Mass.--Call it a tale of two companies.
One has rocketed out of nowhere, in barely three years, to sales of $50 million a month and growing; it has 1,000 employees and a "deep bench" of executive talent bolstering its superstar founders. For the long term, it is planning a new marquee campus on a wooded 100-acre parcel up the road.
The other company could be the illustration next to the dictionary entry for "irrational exuberance," a classic Internet-era burst balloon that has wiped out over $35 billion in shareholder wealth in the last year, after investors' dreaming of a limitless market turned out to be looking at a mirage. They are, of course, the same company: Sycamore Networks.
By all accounts, it's still one of the most promising telecommunications start-ups in the region's history, now slogging through a rougher patch than anyone could have imagined in 1999.