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In this episode of The Bear Roars, Dan Caruso sits down with Dave Schaeffer—Founder and CEO of Cogent Communications—for Part Two of their conversation.
This time, Dave takes us deep inside the chaos of the early 2000s telecom collapse—when companies were vanishing overnight and billions in fiber lay stranded underground. He reveals how Cogent turned crisis into opportunity, buying distressed networks like PSI Net and LambdaNet for pennies on the dollar and stitching them into one of the most efficient global backbones ever built.
Dave and Dan unpack how Cogent’s “focus or fail” strategy defied industry dogma—selling only internet, targeting only high-density buildings, and rejecting the temptation to chase shiny new products. Dave breaks down the math of return on invested capital, the brutal discipline behind saying no to most deals, and why keeping a pure network architecture was key to long-term dominance.
It’s a front-row seat to the stories of the post-crash telecom—and a rare look at the mindset of one of the most relentless dealmakers in digital infrastructure.
Learn more about Cogent Communications: https://cogentco.com/en/
Order Dan’s Book – Bandwidth: The Untold Story of Ambition, Deception, and Innovation that Shaped the Internet Age and Dot-Com Boom: dan-caruso.com/bookTo nominate a founder or yourself as a future guest speaker, email: contact@loudbearproductions.com
