telecom-infrastructure
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The Company Named for Communication Works Underground
For three decades, a Van Nuys contractor has made modern communication possible by doing the least glamorous part first: opening the street, placing the conduit, and closing the ground behind it.
Bandwidth Built the Phone Network Your Software Forgot It Needed
Most communications software companies rent the road. Bandwidth spent decades laying its own - then turned that network into APIs for Google, Microsoft, Zoom and the coming wave of voice AI.
The Fintech Hiding in 50,000 Corner Stores
Emida spent two decades making the neighborhood shop behave like a digital wallet. Its advantage is not a prettier app - it is the stubborn, physical work of reaching cash customers where they already stand.
The Pole Is the Product: How ikeGPS Turned the Grid’s Dullest Asset Into a Recurring Software Business
A hungry lion helped inspire the first device. Two decades later, ikeGPS has narrowed its sights to an unglamorous object with enormous consequences - the utility pole - and built a high-margin software business around it.
The $50 Million Network Rebel That Lets 600 Operators Shop for Their Own Hardware
IP Infusion sells the software inside carrier-grade routers while letting customers pick the box. That separation has turned hardware shortages, power bills and vendor lock-in into a surprisingly practical sales pitch.
Dave Drazen Put the Internet on the Map
For 25 years, the GeoTel founder has turned buried fiber, rooftop towers and lit buildings into something decision-makers can actually see - and use.
The Startup That Turns Drone Photos of Cell Towers Into Money
Anne Zink built a company that lets you inspect a 300-foot cell tower without climbing it. The trick isn't the drone - it's what happens to the pictures after they land.
The Quiet Infrastructure Behind 15 Billion Customer Connections
Every OTP, delivery alert and WhatsApp reply looks simple on a phone. CEQUENS has spent 15 years making the carrier routes, compliance rules and software behind those moments disappear.
Netceed
Netceed sells the unglamorous pieces that make modern networks possible - then adds the engineering, inventory and logistics discipline that keeps thousands of those pieces arriving in the right order.
Accton
Accton spent decades building the switches behind other companies’ brands. Now AI has turned that quiet Taiwanese manufacturing playbook into an $8 billion open-infrastructure business - and pulled it from the rack into optics, cooling and compute.
A10 Networks, Inc.
A10 Networks built a durable business in the least glamorous place on the internet: the traffic choke point. Now the same machinery that kept telecom networks moving is being recast for APIs, AI models and agentic software.
Jason Rudin
Jason Rudin is the founder and CEO of Clad, a Y Combinator-backed (W23) startup building what he calls the operating system for telecom construction. From a New York base, Clad unifies project operations and finance so utilities, internet companies, and their subcontractors can bid, manage, permit, and get paid for laying fiber and rebuilding power networks. Before founding Clad in 2022, Rudin spent four years as a product manager at Meta and Instagram, externed at Google[X], and worked as a business analyst at McKinsey after graduating from Penn's Wharton School and its Management & Technology program. A self-described builder fascinated by how physical things get made, he woodworks, makes art, and reads widely when he is not automating the unglamorous plumbing of American infrastructure.