Connected Nation

How the startup mentality is influencing broadband innovation

• Jessica Denson • Season 6 • Episode 8

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On this episode of Connected Nation, we continue our coverage from Connected America in Irving, Texas, by exploring the Startup Village, where innovation is driving connectivity forward. 

First, we sit down with Huw Rees from NetExperience, a company revolutionizing managed Wi-Fi for apartments, student housing, and hotels. Then, we meet Yishai Amsterdamer, CEO of Litelinx, whose company is introducing smart fiber, a game-changing technology that streamlines deployment and maintenance. 

These startups are tackling some of broadband’s biggest challenges—tune in to learn how their solutions could shape the future of connectivity!

Recommended Links:

Huw Rees LinkedIn

NetExperience website

Yishai Amsterdamer LinkedIn

Litelinx website

Jessica Denson (00:07):

On this episode of Connected Nation, we continue our coverage from the conference called Connected America. I'll take you inside what's been dubbed the Startup Village and introduce you to two companies. One that says it's making the missing puzzle piece that's needed for connectivity, and another that's connecting apartment complexes and schools for much less than what you pay now. I'm Jessica Sen, and this is Connected Nation. I am at Connected America, which is taking place in Irving, Texas, uh, March 11th and 12th. And I have wondered through the whole exhibit hall and come across an area called The Startup Village. And that is where I have met Hugh Reese, who is with Net Experience. Hi Hugh. Huw Rees (00:55):

Hi. Nice to meet you. Jessica Denson (00:56):

Thanks for joining me. Um, tell me a little bit about what you know about the Startup Village, and then I wanna talk about your company. Huw Rees (01:03):

Sure. Uh, in the Startup Village, we were kind of invited to come here and, uh, I thought it was a great opportunity for us to participate in an event that we probably wouldn't have otherwise participated in. Yishai Amsterdamer (01:13):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Um, Huw Rees (01:14):

'cause it was a kind of a low cost way to get into, uh, exhibiting at this trade show. And I think at the kind of audience that comes to this show is exactly who we want to speak to. Jessica Denson (01:23):

Yeah. The, uh, I'll just to lay the groundwork a little bit more for our audience, there's about 10 or so, maybe eight, 10 or 10 to eight little booths here. And on each side is a startup, so it's like a little smaller area rather than your traditional booth. Um, which is great to open up the space, like you said. So talk about net experience and the organization and what you guys do. Huw Rees (01:47):

Sure. So Net Experience is involved in, uh, the open wifi, the telecom Infra project, open wifi initiative. This is an initiative that's very applicable to say the MDU space because, uh, if you think about, um, MDUs, uh, today, what the owner operators are doing is providing managed wifi, fully managed wifi access to their, uh, residence mm-hmm <affirmative>. As opposed to people going out to Best Buy and buying their own route or whatever and interfering with each other. And so now you kind of can go into a new apartment building, uh, when you sign you a lease, you can at the same time log into the wifi mm-hmm <affirmative>. And it's already there for you, waiting for you. Uh, so what we do is we are the management and controller platform for managing large scale wifi deployments, like apartment buildings, student housing, those kind of things. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Um, and we are particularly, um, uh, involved with this thing called the Open wifi initiative, which means there's a lot of people in that ecosystem producing a lot of different products, and then we all interoperate, uh, with each other. Yishai Amsterdamer (02:53):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Huw Rees (02:53):

The end result for the, uh, for the building owner operator is a very low cost approach to providing this service to their residents. And the benefit of course, to the residents is they get fast, reliable, high quality wifi instantaneously. Jessica Denson (03:08):

You had me and I don't have to set up all the technical equipment <laugh>. Right. There's nothing to set up. I hate that. But, um, when you say you work with a different, with a group of people, so you kind of each take a piece of it, or how does that work? Huw Rees (03:21):

So we are pure software company mm-hmm <affirmative>. So we don't actually make the physical, you know, you see on the ceilings, you'll see those physical access points. Right. Uhhuh, <affirmative> or, uh, with the little lights blinking, we don't make those, but we work with other people in the ecosystem that do. So they, there are lots of different vendors that make those different access points. They're called mm-hmm <affirmative>. And, uh, we work with all of them. So an owner operator or a service provider that's servicing those, uh, uh, that those buildings can select whichever vendor they want based on cost, availability, uh, performance, these kind of things. And we will manage it all for them with our Jessica Denson (03:57):

Software. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. When you hear the term startup, sometimes there's some ideas like the little engine that could or sometimes that they just blow up. There's all kinds of ideas people have when you use that term. For you, what does that mean for net experience? Huw Rees (04:11):

Well, I think what it means is we are an early stage company, is what I would guess. Now we are not, we are not like real, real early in that we do actually have customers, we have revenue uhhuh, we have, uh, successful deployments, those kind of things. So, uh, we are, we're a little bit beyond the sort of early stage. We are kind of what I would call more mid stage, uh, startup. So we are not like a big company yet. Uhhuh, <affirmative>, uh, but, uh, of course we have aspirations to be so, uh, and certainly the market that we've chosen these MDU student housing type market, uh, and hospitality as well to an extent is, uh, a very large market. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And one which has traditionally been locked up by some very big brand name vendors. Yishai Amsterdamer (04:51):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Huw Rees (04:52):

But they're a little vulnerable because they're very, very expensive to deploy. And we think we've basically got a better mousetrap at a much lower cost. Jessica Denson (05:00):

So are there any places you can share that you guys are with at this, where you're at at this moment? Or is it Huw Rees (05:06):

Uh, we are, we are in multiple student residences across many universities, Uhhuh, <affirmative>, both in the US and worldwide. We're also in many hotels. We're in some branded hotels like Marriotts and Wyndhams and things like that. Um, and uh, we also have some sort of MDUs that, I mean, unless you were familiar, there's one relatively local to here, the Emory, uh, Uhhuh Building, which was done by a customer of ours called Worldview. They're a very big, um, managed service provider that provides services for MDUs Yishai Amsterdamer (05:37):

Mm-hmm Huw Rees (05:38):

<affirmative>. So, and there's lots of case studies on our website where you can see other deployments that we've done. Jessica Denson (05:43):

So the average person would necessarily see net experience. You work directly business to business, right? Huw Rees (05:49):

That's correct. Uhhuh, the average person will never know our name. We, we are good right? From the podcast we're, we're way behind the curtain, uh, uhhuh. Um, so the only people they might be familiar with, if they, if you stay in hotels like Marriots, you'll probably see people like Worldview or somebody on the little remote control on your TV or something like that. That's, so worldview is our customer. Oh, okay. Gotcha. So we are one step behind that Uhhuh. So no, you would never see our Jessica Denson (06:12):

Brand. So you are the vice president of business development, right? Yes. So that's a little heavy weight to carry. Do you have a, a big team or is it just you, uh, choo chewing across the Huw Rees (06:22):

<laugh>? Well, I, it's a small, let's put it as a small team. Right, okay. So I have a sort of a, a couple of marketing people helping me and I have a, a couple of technical, uh, sales engineers that support me as well. Yishai Amsterdamer (06:34):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Huw Rees (06:34):

So it's a small team. Um, uh, obviously we're intending to grow the team mm-hmm <affirmative>. Uh, as we expand, um, things are going well. So I, I imagine that will be the case over the over 20, 25 and 2026. Jessica Denson (06:46):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. So you have a bit of an accent. You probably think I have an accent, <laugh>, right? Yeah. Uh, so where are you from and how'd you end up here in the us? Huw Rees (06:54):

So, I'm originally from the uk. I'm, uh, originally from England and Wales, so I'm like half and half. Um, but I, uh, moved over to California in, uh, 1986. Jessica Denson (07:06):

Oh, nice. Huw Rees (07:06):

Quite some time ago. Uhhuh, I've been here so nearly 40 years ago, so I've been, I didn't lose the accent though. Jessica Denson (07:12):

No, it's still there. Huw Rees (07:13):

I kept the accent. Jessica Denson (07:14):

That's the charm, right? That's like, I wouldn't talk to him. So if, if another business was interested in learning more about Net experience, how would they do so? Huw Rees (07:21):

Well, the easiest way would be to contact me, or you can of course go to the website, net experience.com and click the little button that says, you know, uh, tell me more. Jessica Denson (07:31):

Okay. I'll include a link to, uh, your, your business and the description of this podcast. Great. Thank you. Thank you so much. I really appreci appreciate it. Hugh Reese with Net Experience. Huw Rees (07:40):

Thanks, Yishai Amsterdamer (07:40):

Jessica. Jessica Denson (07:44):

I am still in the startup village and I'm talking to some, uh, companies that are taking part in this really unique area of the exhibit hall and I have run across, I'm gonna try to get your name right. Eisha? Yes. Amsterdam, right? Yishai Amsterdamer (07:57):

You got it right? Jessica Denson (07:58):

Oh, yes, yes. He is the CEO of Light links. Uh, tell me a little bit about Light Links and what you guys do. Yishai Amsterdamer (08:04):

Okay, so Light Links, it's very cool company. We are, what we did is we set up to do, to bring innovation mm-hmm <affirmative>. And part of the innovation, what we discover is that in the fiber industry there is a lot of innovation, but not really a lot in it. So we wanted to bring something new. So we created the missing piece of the puzzle. So we created what we call the smart fiber that smart fiber bring as the ability that when people are actually deploying the cables, we can scan those cables and get the geo positioning of that cable and we can immediately send it to our platform in the cloud and position it. So we are, while the team are working and constructing Yishai Amsterdamer (08:42):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yishai Amsterdamer (08:43):

They actually, the inspectors and the crews that are behind in the backend, they can see immediately what is going on, on visually on their cloud platform. So that's bringing a lot of values and with that it's help us to enable additional services so we can create smart warehousing work, work order management. Yishai Amsterdamer (09:03):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yishai Amsterdamer (09:03):

Make ready, permit tracking, all that stuff can come into the system and, and then it's become much bigger than the engine that we just created. And, and the cool thing is that we are seeing is that more and more we are talking with people, we are seeing that there is actually a lot of application that are outside of the scope that we were thinking. So we are very excited about the future of that innovation. Jessica Denson (09:26):

So, uh, smart fiber is kind of how you referred to it? Yishai Amsterdamer (09:30):

Yes. Jessica Denson (09:30):

What, what made you even notice that that was an issue or a need? Yishai Amsterdamer (09:34):

We saw that there is, while we are working with some of our partners, we saw that there, they always struggle with the same thing. Yishai Amsterdamer (09:42):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yishai Amsterdamer (09:43):

For example, I'll just give you an and, and one example is they sending crews to the warehouse and they discover that the material that they want is not there. So we said, okay, probably with that technology we can help them understand what they have in their warehouse mm-hmm <affirmative>. So now if they know in real time what exists in the warehouse that now we solve their crew issue, when they will go there, the material will be there. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Most likely. So that's how we actually came to see and, and to manifest all those use cases. And this is how we identify by working with those operator and seeing their issues. Mm-hmm Jessica Denson (10:21):

<affirmative>. So, um, you said you're the CEO of the organization. Yes. So, because, um, you know, it's being labeled as a startup. Yes. But how big is the company really at this point? And how long have you guys been around? Um, does that give you more, the fact that you're a startup, quote unquote? Does that give you more flexibility to respond? Yishai Amsterdamer (10:42):

I would say that our mentality is a mentality of a startup. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Whether we are a big company in terms of the number of people mm-hmm <affirmative>. Or we are small, the most important for us is to keep that mentality that we are very ag agile, we are very nimble. We'll jump on the customer requirement. I think this is what we are taking. It's not for, for me, it doesn't really matter how long and how big we are. Yishai Amsterdamer (11:04):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yishai Amsterdamer (11:04):

Even if, let's say we will grow to be, you know, God willing and 1,100 people uhhuh, I will still want to maintain that mindset because it's a cultural thing. It's not about the size of it, it's about the culture. And this is what make us proud. We, we always say that we want to be customer centric and we want to be ethical. Those are the things that, that we want to be the front center of the company. Jessica Denson (11:28):

I noticed that you and your team seem to have a little fun. Yishai Amsterdamer (11:31):

Yes. Jessica Denson (11:31):

Um, so are, is it a very tight knit group that you guys have here? Yishai Amsterdamer (11:34):

Yes. Yes. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. It's all based on, you know, people that we are working with for many years mm-hmm <affirmative>. And people that we know in the industry for many years. So, and it's all about in the end the relationship. So it's very important for us to foster those relationship. I mean, you know, you can, you can sell one time to everyone Yishai Amsterdamer (11:50):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yishai Amsterdamer (11:50):

But you cannot sell twice if you actually did something wrong. So we are trying to bring really value, not only in in our innovation, but also in the way we interface with our customer. We want to respect them and to see that there is a value. So it's very important to us. Jessica Denson (12:06):

Tell me a little bit about you. What is your background? Yishai Amsterdamer (12:09):

Oh, so my background, I started with technology. So I went in from software engineer Yishai Amsterdamer (12:16):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yishai Amsterdamer (12:16):

And in communication. So this is how I started. Uh, I grew up in, in a place that everything was related to communication because this is, that was the major application. So it was all army related. So we started in communication and I went through the channel of software developer and then team leader, then, you know, group manager, then director. Jessica Denson (12:37):

So you've seen it all. Then Yishai Amsterdamer (12:38):

I developed communication system from usually wireless from A to Z mm-hmm <affirmative>. Including the NMS. So I was, I would say for about 20 years or so in the development in the r and d led, uh, I was the vp, R and d for a company named Alvaron. Doesn't exist anymore. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. But I used to manage more than like 400 engineers. So it was, it was a big thing. Yishai Amsterdamer (13:02):

Uhhuh <affirmative>. Yishai Amsterdamer (13:03):

So I grew up in the r and d. And then when I moved, uh, when I relocated my family to the us then the company asked me to also take a, a, a business role. And then I started to manage in a small way the North American market, Yishai Amsterdamer (13:17):

Uhhuh. Yishai Amsterdamer (13:17):

And then I grew up to manage the entire global market of that company. And now we started our own. Uh, Jessica Denson (13:23):

That's exciting. Yeah. So, uh, how long has Light Links been around and Yishai Amsterdamer (13:29):

What do you have to do? We have about, we are about 18 months mm-hmm <affirmative>. Running the company, but we, we are hoping, we are, we are dreaming big. Like we think that the innovation and the patterns that we are, we are developing are something that we will set us apart because we are looking on, on what we can bring as a value. So everything that we are doing, we're trying to bring a really value into it. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. So even if you're doing something that look very, I would say very ordinary, like a cabinet, even to that, we're bringing our technical team and we are outsourcing sometimes expert, what are your difficulties? And we are talking with our customers and then we are trying to bring in, we're not trying to build something that never works, but we will try to make it easier for the customer. Jessica Denson (14:10):

Mm-hmm. And you're really business to business, right? Yes. Do you work directly with providers or who, who are generally your customer base? Yishai Amsterdamer (14:17):

So we do work also with the providers mm-hmm <affirmative>. So it's not only business. So we are not in the consumer market. Right. So we will not go house to house and, and sell the internet service mm-hmm <affirmative>. But we will work with the service providers. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. So the service provider are our main target customers and we have a distributor, uh, distributors in the US So we are working Good Wave MBSI. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. IP supply. Now it's part of way wind come and, and more to come. So we are, we are very excited for out of our journey. Jessica Denson (14:44):

So if one of them wanted to get a hold of you of Light Links, I I'll include a link to your company Yishai Amsterdamer (14:49):

Yeah. Jessica Denson (14:49):

In the description of this podcast. But should they reach out to you? Should they, do you have a team or No, Yishai Amsterdamer (14:54):

They can reach out to me. It's directly That's awesome. Directly it's, uh, we are, there is no formality, Jessica Denson (15:00):

<laugh>, Yishai Amsterdamer (15:01):

So they can reach out, they can tell me exactly what they need and we'll try to help in whatever we can. Jessica Denson (15:06):

What is the one thing that you hope people take away about our conversation about lightly? Yishai Amsterdamer (15:12):

One thing that's important is that come to us. If you really have a need, we will help you to solve your problem. We have our solution, but we'll support you even though if it's not 100% fit to what you need. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. We will make it work for you. Jessica Denson (15:27):

Alright. Thank you so much, Isha. I really appreciate it. Yishai Amsterdamer (15:30):

Thank you. Jessica Denson (15:39):

On the next episode of Connected Nation, we'll continue our coverage from Connected America. Until then, I'm Jessica Denson.

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