Introducing the Baha’i Tayebi Family- Communications Technology,
Weapons Contracts and Biotechnology
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20060418-9999-1b18tayebi....
Telecom exec eager for biotech venture
By Rachel Laing
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
April 18, 2006
Masood Tayebi has proven remarkably facile in dealing with new and
different cultures.
SCOTT LINNETT / Union-Tribune
Masood Tayebi of Rancho Santa Fe said he learned early how to
navigate
new environments when his family moved from the countryside of Iran
to
the city so he and his six siblings could attend school.
The 43-year-old technology executive has made his way from the
Iranian
countryside to the manicured landscapes of Rancho Santa Fe, from just
scraping by to being one of San Diego's wealthiest residents, from
helping out in his father's farm products business to sitting at the
helm of a multibillion-dollar telecom enterprise.
Now Tayebi, the founder and current board chairman of San Diego's
Wireless Facilities, is moving from the telecom industry, where he
made his money and his reputation, to biotechnology as co-founder of
scientific outsourcing firm BioDuro.
Tayebi said he learned early how to navigate new environments when
his
family moved from the countryside to the city so he and his six
siblings could attend school.
Masood Tayebi
Age: 43
Title: executive chairman of BioDuro in San Diego; board chairman of
Wireless Facilities in San Diego
Professional experience: partner in Bridgewest, a San Diego venture
capital and real estate investment firm; founder of Wireless
Facilities, a telecom engineering services firm where he also held
president, CEO and chairman positions; wireless engineer with British
Telecom and LCC International.
Education: doctorate in mobile radio propagation from the University
of Liverpool; master's degree in electronics engineering from the
University of Southampton.
Personal: married to Dr. Surinder Tayebi; three children, ages 8, 6,
and 2.
Family reunion: In post-revolution Iran, the Tayebis and others of
the
Bahai faith have been persecuted. Tayebi's parents were not allowed
to
leave the country to join their children for some time. They have now
settled with the rest of the Tayebi clan in Rancho Santa Fe.
Source: Union-Tribune research
Moving to the city, he said, was like moving to another country.
Tayebi's family belonged to the Ghashghai tribe of nomads from
Central
Asia who speak a Turkic language. In the city, they needed to speak
Farsi. The Tayebis also practiced the Bahai faith, making them part
of
a tiny minority in a nation of predominantly Shiite Muslims.
His mother, who had not attended school as a child, studied alongside
Tayebi when he was in the first grade, learning to read and write
with
him.
“When we came home from school, she was standing by the door and
said,
'Show me your grades,' ” he recalled with a smile. “It made you feel
guilty to have a bad grade.”
After the revolution in Iran, the persecution of the Bahai became
more
severe, and they no longer were allowed to attend school. Tayebi's
father sent the children to England to continue their educations.
Tayebi excelled, earning a master's degree in electronics engineering
from the University of Southampton and a doctorate in mobile radio
propagation from the University of Liverpool.
While in school, Tayebi already was trying his hand as an
entrepreneur. He bought broken televisions on the cheap, then fixed
and resold them. In graduate school, he solicited coding contracts
from software companies and hired fellow students to do the work.
After completing his studies, Tayebi began consulting for British
telecommunications firms on their wireless initiatives. His brother
Sean had come to the United States for medical school and told his
brothers, “This is the country you've been dreaming about.”
But Tayebi was apprehensive, mostly because of Hollywood's
depictions.
“I thought of the U.S. as this violent place where everyone was
killing each other,” he said.
In 1993, Tayebi visited Washington, D.C., on a two-week business
trip,
saw the sunshine, wide roads and friendly people and called England
to
say he was “never coming back.”
His brother Massih arrived soon after, and in 1994 in New York the
two
started Wireless Facilities, an engineering-services firm.
Masood Tayebi interviewed Christa Lush, who now runs her own telecom
consulting firm, in an office he shared with one of the company's
seed
investors in the New York City garment district.
“There was clothing hanging everywhere,” Lush recalled. “We had the
interview, and he typed up the offer letter right there. I said I had
to discuss it with my husband and he said, 'Do you want to call him
now?' ”
Lush accepted the job the next morning. Later, much to her surprise,
she found out she had been the company's first employee.
Wireless Facilities, which moved to San Diego about a year later,
skyrocketed to success as carriers built out networks to keep up with
a growing number of subscribers. The company went public in 1999. By
2000, it had a market capitalization of $7 billion and 2,000
employees.
The Tayebi brothers were the toast of the San Diego business
community, garnering awards such as a local award for Ernst & Young
Entrepreneur of the Year.
Then everything changed.
The technology sector went from boom to bust in 2001, and Wireless
Facilities struggled to survive. After trying everything else,
including suspending their own salaries, the Tayebi brothers were
forced to do something they said they never would: They laid off 45
percent of their workers.
“We kept delaying it, and the pain kept growing,” Tayebi said.
“For years, we'd built this family culture, but then how can you cut
your brothers and sisters? Every time you let someone go, you let go
of a family – a spouse, their kids.”
The company survived the downturn and since has attempted to
diversify
its business beyond telecom carriers to include U.S. government
defense contracts, metropolitan wireless Internet projects and even
smaller, business information technology contracts.
Once the company was back on its feet – though still a shadow of its
former self – Tayebi handed the reins to former Titan Corp. executive
Eric DeMarco and stepped down as chief executive in early 2004.
Tayebi
remains board chairman.
While Tayebi enjoyed spending more time with his children, he quickly
realized he wasn't cut out for early retirement. His wife, Dr.
Surinder Tayebi, wasn't crazy about the idea either.
“She enjoyed that I was home, but I was getting a little too
involved,” Tayebi said. “I organized the kids a little too much.”
He also began to worry about how his children would perceive their
father.
“I wondered, 'What are they going to think?' ” he said. “They won't
know I worked hard. They'll think I was lucky or that I inherited
money.”
Tayebi began looking for his next challenge, something that would
have
an impact in his own community. Surinder, an obstetrician, impressed
upon him the universal impact of health care and biotech, but Tayebi
knew very little about biotech. He needed a partner to teach him
about
life science but one who also shared his goals of starting a company
for the long haul – without tapping venture capital or the public
markets.
He found his match in John Oyler, whom Tayebi knew from investing in
Oyler's telecom-research firm, Telephia, nearly a decade ago. Oyler,
a
graduate of Stanford and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had
helped start several biotech companies.
The two founded BioDuro, essentially a life-sciences equivalent to
Wireless Facilities. BioDuro's pitch is that it can increase the odds
of success for early-stage biotech companies by allowing them to
outsource chemistry and clinical functions. BioDuro can test several
compounds for the same cost as testing one.
The company, which plans to have about 200 chemists on staff by the
end of the year, will do much of its work in China and India to keep
costs down. It also will run clinical trials and shepherd new drugs
through the approval process in the two countries.
Tayebi said he knows the business will face stiff competition, but he
intends for BioDuro to dominate by having talented people and a
family
culture that fosters productivity.
“Anything we can do, they can copy – except our culture,” Tayebi
said.
“All we need is to be a few minutes more productive than our
competitors.”