One of Bob Davis‘ lieutenants has quit Terra Lycos to run Ellacoya Networks, a Merrimack, N.H., telecom
infrastructure play.
Ron Sege, president of U.S. operations for the international Internet network resigned Friday, one day after Davis left to join a Boston venture capital firm.
It’s not that Sege believes Terra Lycos, formed by the merger between Lycos, the Waltham, Mass., portal, and Terra Networks, the Internet arm of the Spanish telecom giant,
Telefonica, will stumble. In fact, he still holds significant stock in his former employer.
But the 43-year-old missed being a hands on manager — meeting with engineers, factory workers, customers and partners. He’ll be able to do all that at Ellacoya,
which employs 200 people, most of them in Merrimack, just over the Massachusetts border.
“(Davis and I) are both motivated by the same thing, taking businesses that are small and making them big,” Sege said. “The timing was right, we could either re-up
with the new enterprise or decide to do something different.”
Sege’s new title is president and CEO. Founder Kurt Dobbins, a former Cabletron executive who has served as president of Ellcoya, will move to CTO.
Attracting Sege, who previously held high-level posts at 3Com, is a coup for the small Granite State company which already boasts Bay Networks and Lucent alums and should help raise its profile in a region
heavy with telecom firms.
Ellacoya grabbed $86 million in v.c. last year from backers including Bessemer Partners. The company makes hardware and
software switching systems that enable carriers to deliver revenue-rich services like streaming video and teleconferences.
Sege is bullish on the market, believing that high-speed services will be to Internet access what cable was to the TV industry — a way to give consumers added, personalized services.
“Goal number one is to get some customers and revenues,” Sege said. “We’re just out of stealth mode and we’re telling the world what we do.”
As for Terra Lycos, Ted Philip, who stepped down as Terra Lycos CFO on Thursday, will assume Sege’s post on an interim basis. The search for a new
president already has begun.
Editor’s note: Ellacoyca was one of boston.interent.com’s “21 for
2001” companies.
