And What It Taught Me About Technology Disruption
Sometimes the most valuable lessons come from our biggest setbacks. Looking back at how I lost my first job after university in the late 1980s, I can see it was my first real education in how quickly technology can transform an entire industry – and how businesses that don’t adapt simply disappear.
The Dawn of a New Era
Fresh out of university in 1986, I landed my first role at a small British startup called Dawn Systems with an ex-Amstrad engineer as one of their founders. My background was hardly conventional for tech sales – I was an ex-microbiologist with just a few months of advertising sales experience under my belt (okay, so technically it was my second job, but I tend to discount a few months of freelance, commission-only advertising sales) – but they took a chance on me to handle sales and marketing.
Dawn Systems had created something genuinely innovative: a sleek, portable VT100 terminal with a distinctive clamshell design in brushed aluminium. For those unfamiliar with the era, VT100 terminals were the workhorses of computing – they allowed users to connect to the, hugely successful, DEC VAX minicomputers from remote locations. For a bit of techie context this had a built-in 75/1,200 baud modem, radical at the time. Our portable version was elegant, professional, and perfectly suited to the business computing needs of the mid-1980s.
The Golden Moment
Initially, we did remarkably well. The timing seemed perfect – businesses were increasingly distributed, professionals needed to access central systems from various locations, and our portable terminals offered an ideal solution. The brushed aluminium finish gave it a premium feel, made it rugged, and the clamshell design was both protective and professional. We were riding high, convinced we’d found our niche in the expanding business computing market.
What we didn’t anticipate was how quickly the computing landscape would shift beneath our feet.
The Storm Clouds Gather
The first serious challenger appeared in 1983 when Compaq launched their Portable PC, essentially an IBM PC clone from around 1984 that could run MS-DOS and all PC software. But this was still a hefty machine, and we thought our elegant terminals remained competitive.
The real disruption began in earnest in 1985. In April 1985, Toshiba released the T1100 as a laptop personal computer that was fully compatible with the IBM PC, weighing just 9 pounds and offering 256 KB of conventional RAM extendable to 512 KB, and a monochrome LCD capable of displaying 80×25 text and 640×200 CGA graphics. This wasn’t just a terminal – it was a complete computer.
Then in 1986, the Toshiba T1100 Plus was released and was advertised as the smallest and lightest dual disk laptop on the market. The T1000, which was the smallest, lightest IBM compatible laptop ever produced when it was released to market in 1987, and held the distinction of being the first such laptop to cost less than $1,000. The writing was on the wall, but it was about to get much worse.
The killer blow came in 1988. I remember setting up our stand at the Which Computer Show in Birmingham and being happy at being next to the much larger Compaq stand, as they would help bring traffic our way. However, my mood changed when they started unpacking something unusual, so I went to have a look and ask a few questions. This is testing my memory (and the internet) but I think they were previewing the SLT/286 – their first “laptop”
Meanwhile, Amstrad was making computing accessible to the masses with their PCW series, and other manufacturers were rapidly driving down prices while increasing functionality.
The Inevitable End
Our beautiful, brushed aluminium terminals suddenly looked like expensive relics. Why would a business buy a device that could only access remote systems when they could purchase a complete portable computer for similar money? These new portable PCs could run spreadsheets, word processors, databases, and games – plus connect to remote systems when needed.
The market shift wasn’t gradual; it was swift and merciless. Our orders dried up almost overnight. Customers who had been interested suddenly went quiet or explicitly told us they were waiting to see what the upcoming portable PCs could offer (the SLT/286 only became available in October, so much anticipation). The technology that had made us successful – elegant, dedicated terminal hardware – became our Achilles heel.
Dawn Systems couldn’t adapt quickly enough. We were hardware specialists in a world that was rapidly moving toward general-purpose computing. Our product, however well-designed, had become a solution to yesterday’s problem.
The Which Computer Show was in January, by March I was working for NextBase (publishers of the AutoRoute software), another British start-up and another exciting chapter of my life.
The Hard Lesson
Losing that job was devastating at the time, but it taught me something invaluable about technology markets: today’s innovation is tomorrow’s obsolescence. The companies that survive aren’t necessarily those with the best current product, but those that can anticipate where the market is heading and adapt accordingly.
This is just one of the many lessons we bring to our clients with Exitologists, helping you
build flexibility and adaptability into your organisation and not just on what your clients need today, but on how their needs might evolve as technology and markets shift.
The Broader Implications
The portable terminal vs. portable PC battle was just one skirmish in the broader personal computing revolution, but it perfectly illustrated how quickly established markets can be upended. Companies like Compaq, Toshiba, and Amstrad weren’t just offering better terminals – they were redefining what portable computing could be.
This pattern has repeated countless times since: smartphones didn’t just replace mobile phones, they redefined personal computing; streaming didn’t just improve video rental, it transformed entertainment; cloud computing didn’t just offer better servers, it changed how we think about IT infrastructure.
Looking Forward
Today, as AI reshapes entire industries and new technologies emerge at breakneck speed, I often think back to those days at Dawn Systems. The companies and careers that will thrive are those that remain curious, adaptable, and ready to reinvent themselves when the market demands it.
Sometimes losing your first job is the best thing that can happen to your career. It certainly was for mine.
