Born to Run

He soon found out why. Some companies realized they needed cable only after their minicomputers had arrived, or they suddenly discovered that the new floor plan in sales would require 20 additional feet of cable. Not wanting to sully their high-tech image -- or tie up inventory dollars in low-margin fare -- few computer companies supplied the cable. And hardly any of them delivered it in less than six months. As Levine got orders he spooled off the appropriate footage and then called on Benson to perform the delicate task of stripping off the jacket, bending back the foil, and crimping on the connectors. Benson pitched in during his lunch hour, leaving invoicing chores for the weekend.

By the summer of 1983, Levine -- who by that time had sold much more than the original 10,000 feet -- recruited his two younger brothers to pound away on the phones and fill orders in his two-car garage. Soon, he also invested about $1,000 a month in getting lists of potential customers, including subscribers to computer magazines.

Though orders picked up at the rate of two or three a week, Levine did not expect much from Cabletron, and with good reason. His track record in entrepreneurial ventures was hardly encouraging. Among his previous endeavors: a landscaping business that killed grass and butchered hedges, a biorhythm company that had to hand out refunds when customers discovered their charts were not individualized, and a limousine service that quickly stalled out. Even in the fiscal year that ended February 28, 1984, when Cabletron amassed more than $120,000 in sales, Levine had begun seeking his fortune in real estate, inspired by a careful reading of the Forbes 400. Within five years he had lost a whopping $3 million -- getting out of personal bankruptcy only by selling some of his Cabletron stock as part of the IPO in 1989.

But by the summer of 1984, Cabletron had moved into a 4,000-square-foot office in Ashland, Mass. Benson, who still had a full-time job, got swamped trying to keep up with the invoicing. "I'd sit in his car and find invoices between the seats," recalls Levine. Orders grew larger and larger: one company signed up for $225,000 worth of cable. Levine and his brother Kenneth, then 20, went out and personally sealed some of the bigger deals, sitting down and negotiating the finer points as they chomped on chewing tobacco.

As the company sped toward nearly $900,000 in sales in fiscal 1985 -- branching into different types of cables as well as terminators and other supplies, all delivered "at the speed of light" -- Cabletron was slipping beyond Levine's grasp. "Get this," he'd brag to Benson, "I just made a 100% margin." "No, Bob," Benson would explain, "that's a 100% markup." So the employees wanted $8 an hour? Fine, Levine would say. Benson would later have to tell him he couldn't afford it. Actually, not many of the employees stuck around for long. Levine, more interested in lifting sales than morale, was hard on them. Benson urged him to ease up. "I had never had a person work for me," says Levine, "so this was all pretty new."

And awful. Levine was used to selling, and that was what he wanted to focus on. So in November 1984 he decided to bring aboard someone who could untangle the rest. "You gotta help me," he pleaded to Benson.

Benson had his doubts. For one, Levine was still representing other companies for a living; for another, Cabletron was losing $20,000 in its second year. Benson did not want to end up jobless, especially with his wife about seven months pregnant. "I won't leave you out in the lurch," Levine assured. Two hours later Benson joined up.

As a pair, they looked comical: one short, one tall; one husky, one thin; one impulsive, one careful. Here was Benson, three years older, always urging that they think things through. And there was Levine, who, as a kid, shot birds because they woke him up with their chirping. At times Benson giddily compared them to The Blues Brothers of movie fame. But as it turns out, there was nothing frivolous about their partnership.

Levine and Benson, in fact, would play off each other in ways no one could ever have anticipated.

Many a growing company forgets the lessons of its earlier days. Though hardly sentimental, Levine has held tight to the principle that rewarded Cabletron with such staggering growth: keep your promises, and customers will take care of the rest. No revelation there. But most CEOs find it harder to remember, and more challenging to follow through on, as revenues soar.

Levine had seen that happen many times. As a rep, he had dealt with far too many suppliers from whom he could not even get a firm delivery date. Similarly, Benson had emerged from his previous job with an almost pathological hatred of vice-presidents. "They get wrapped up in their titles instead of getting work done," he says.

To a large extent their shared contempt for this insidious enemy -- Levine calls it deadwood, while Benson refers to it as bureaucracy -- dominates Cabletron's culture.

As the company has grown, the two have become more fierce about stamping out anything that even remotely resembles bloat. One of their biggest arguments, in fact, grew out of Levine's decision to let one salesman call himself a vice-president. There have been no vice-presidents since.

It's a good thing too, because there wouldn't be anyplace for them to congregate. In all 126,000 square feet of Cabletron's headquarters, now in Rochester, N.H., there is not even one meeting room. While that doesn't prevent get-togethers, both Levine and Benson argue that it does keep meetings to an average of 20 minutes or less. Benson once spied an 18-person meeting going on. Storming in, he threatened, "If you people all have the time for this meeting, then I guess I really don't need this many people."

It would be easy to pass off Levine and Benson's rejection of such big-company practices as superficial -- and, at times, absurd. Levine fires any salesperson who flies during company time. And "if you use a flip chart, you don't belong here," he says. But even in making difficult and defining strategic decisions, the pair have consistently kept flexibility and speed as their top priorities.

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