Today, our guest is Globalive Chairman Anthony Lacavera.
If you are new to Canadian entrepreneurship, you might not be familiar with the name, but dude is an OG – he’s been in the trenches.
“The worst outcome for Rogers is an actual real competitor, which is what we are. They know we’re going to bring prices down and they don’t want prices to come down.”
– Anthony Lacavera
Think running your SaaS startup is hard? Try launching a national telecom competitor, failing to find local financing, and having to raise capital from an Egyptian telecom, only to then be told by the CRTC just before launch that your company doesn’t meet Canadian ownership requirements. Lacavera’s worst day as an entrepreneur is worse than your worst day.
As Lacavera says on this podcast, he never wanted to sell Wind Mobile in the first place. And it doesn’t seem like Shaw wants Wind (now called Freedom Mobile) anymore. So why is he having such difficulty getting it back?
Lacavera makes his case in this episode as to why he thinks he has the best offer around for Freedom, but it doesn’t seem like the best offer is the highest concern in this scenario.
You see, on this podcast, we might talk Canadian tech and tech from a Canadian perspective, but today we’re in Competitiontown, where freedom of choice is hard to come by. Just ask Matt Boswell, our competition commissioner, who’s currently trying to block the Rogers / Shaw merger that’s driving the Freedom sale in the first place.
If the competition bureau is successful (mediation between the bureau, Rogers, and Shaw starts July 4th) that would prevent Lacavara from having an opportunity to buy Freedom at all. If it’s not successful, Lacavara is hoping the PMO will step in and force a sale of Freedom that would give Canadians a viable fourth telecom.
And if that doesn’t happen?
Well, we asked Lacavara on the podcast if he’d be willing to build a new telecom from scratch if he can’t buy back Freedom. His answer?
Let’s dig in.
Subscribe via: RSS, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts.
The BetaKit Podcast is hosted by Douglas Soltys & Rob Kenedi. Edited by Kattie Laur. Sponsored by Linebox Studio.
