Having a blast at work

One atomic bomb developer fires Mr Meyer's imagination

After seven years at fellow high-tech firm Tibco, Fred Meyer joined Cast Iron as chief executive in February 2003.

During his stint at Tibco he helped broaden the group's appeal away from its financial consulting routes into a communications integration firm.

Before joining Tibco, Mr Meyer spent 10 years helping to make manufacturing more cost effective in industries such as car making and pharmaceuticals.

What was your first car?

It was a 1957 Ford Fairlane custom 500. I would have much preferred a 1956 Thunderbird.

The Ford Fairlane had a 312 cubic inch engine in it, which I and some friends shoehorned inside. This increased terminal velocity, but unfortunately did not improve handling.

The Thunderbird was a work of art - even when standing still - and thus much preferred.

What was your first job?

Houston County News, shooting photographs and writing local sports columns when I was twelve.

I got $3.00 (£1.63) per photo and 50 cents (27p) per column inch. I would get calls from the paper to show up and photograph 'events' - there's not much excitement in a town of 2,500.

Local sporting events were a source of both photographic and journalistic revenue. Combined, the income was sufficient to help me avoid taking a real job until the age of 16.

What was your first house?

A 1952 vintage house on a quarter acre lot in Saratoga, California which cost $106,000.

It was a great house, hand built with a large garden.

Unfortunately, it was only 900 square feet, which was challenging when company arrived.

What's the best bit of business advice you've had?

In the 1980's, I was executive vice president of engineering for a company building some of the first real time manufacturing systems.

We took an ill-advised contract with a large Korean Chaebol - a conglomerate of companies clustered around a parent group - that wound up costing us more than we were able to bill for the project.

The bespoke software developed for a project was a total loss.

Our chief executive had been a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford, who had spent several very tough research seasons in Antarctica puzzling out the workings of the upper atmosphere.

He was philosophical about the whole debacle, offering us Chung Park's advice: "Sometimes the most valuable lesson you can learn from doing something is never to do it again."

Who is your biggest inspiration?

Richard Feynman - he was successful because he did things his own way, he had a broad range of talents and he did everything with a sense of humour.

Feynman worked on the Manhattan Project - the US project that developed the atomic bomb - as a theoretician. He delighted in opening the 'top secret' safes scattered around the project and leaving little notes inside to let the military brass know he'd been there.

He received the Nobel Prize for his work on Quantum Electrodynamics, which was done using methods which resulted in the famous Feynman diagrams in use to this day.

What was the proudest moment of your career?

The Tibco flotation. We proved the value of our company dream, and redistributed that value to the shareholders who had believed in us.

Starting from a specialty financial services consulting company, Tibco grew into a major integration player and proved the real value of integration by surviving the internet bubble.

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Cast Iron Systems aim to help its clients to integrate its computer and communications systems.

Its customers include British American Tobacco, auto parts supplier Delco Remy and mobile phone firm Kyocera.

Based in Mountain View, California, Cast Iron was founded in 2001 and is backed by funding from Sequoia Capital and Norwest Venture Partners.