For the second time in 27 years, Terry Matthews is taking Mitel public. This time around, the company is apparently looking to raise $150-million for "general corporate purposes". While Matthews is well-respected as Canada's leading telecom entrepreneur, it is important that potential Mitel investors realize the Ottawa-based company is posting large losses as it pours money into R&D,sales and marketing to compete with heavyweights such as Cisco, Avaya and Nortel in the IP communications market. For history buffs, Mitel originally went public in 1979 after it was started six years earlier by Matthews and Michael Cowpland, who later went on to start Corel Corp.

At the height of the telecom boom, JDS Uniphase was the toast of the Canadian high-tech scene with more than 10,000 employees in Ottawa. Meanwhile, its beret-wearing CEO Jozef Straus became the man of the moment - rocketing from a-little known telecom executive to magazine cover-boy. Then, the telecom boom came to an end, JDS moved its corporate headquarters to San Jose, and the company started to lay off thousands of employees, including most of its workforce in Ottawa. Straus, however, was savvy enough to walk away from JDS with more than $150-million - most of them from exercising stock options before retiring in 2003.
  Perhaps the final chapter of JDS' sad story in Ottawa is news the federal government is about to sign a 25-year, $600-million lease for a new headquarters for the RCMP. When the lease expires, the government can buy the state-of-the-art complex for $1 from Minto Development, which purchased the complex a few years ago for $30-million. Does it seem perculiar to anyone that Straus is still well-regarded with Ottawa's high-tech community when, at the end of the day, there's almost nothing left of JDS? Isn't entrepreneurial success (at one important aspect) the creation of something tangible that benefits from community? Sure, JDS created a few millionaires if you were smart enough to sell at the right time but that's about it. At least the RCMP will be happy when they move into their new digs, which features a gourmet kitchen, 300-seat auditorium and gym.