On Golden - Gerry - Pond: Initial reflections

The first time I saw Gerry Pond was in the early-mid 1990s and he was a VP at NBTel. He was doing a presentation on the information highway and discussing laundry. I don’t remember the whole spiel but it was something about using telecommunications to track his shirts through the process of having them dry-cleaned. I may be remembering this incorrectly but it was definitely an interesting first exposure. A couple of years later, I was at a meeting where he introduced a new NBTel wunderkind, Marcel LeBrun, who went on to lead the development of iMagicTV and then eventually Radian6.

Gerry went on to be the CEO of NBTel but only for a short while as he was there when NBTel merged to become Bell Aliant which ultimately became Bell Canada. One of the interesting observations I have here is that NBTel employed somewhere around 2,000 in Saint John at its peak and by around 2020 was down to a few hundred. If you add up all the jobs created by Pond-supported startups - almost all the lost telecom jobs were replaced with IT jobs. I did this analysis a few years ago not sure the numbers today.

Maybe 20 years ago, I was speaking at an IT conference and at an evening mixer was chatting with Gerry when a young fella sidled up and launched into an elevator pitch. He had an idea for a local news content aggregator (who didn’t at that time) and he wanted Gerry to invest - he promised a 10X return within 18 months. After two or three incisive questions, the guy moved along presumably to find another mark.

Over the years I have enjoyed many conversations with Gerry. The last was only a few months ago. I was in a hotel room in Toronto and my wife called - for some reason he texted her phone and said he wanted to chat. Since Adriana didn’t really know him, she assumed he wanted to speak with me. I called him and he was quite riled up about a converation at the NB Business Council about the changes to immigration. He thought - as many do - that attracting talent to New Brunswick was critical to our future success.

Successful economies need guys and gals like Gerry. He tells the story of how he ended up in New Brunswick - I believe he came from Quebec for a wedding (?) and ended up at NB Power? Maybe not? Anyway, he ultimately landed at NBTel and was a part of that remarkable leadership team that was so critical to New Brunswick’s economic development in the 1990s and early 2000s.

I’ll miss him and our chats. We could use a few more like him. I’m not sure RFID tags ever became a thing in laundry but he was behind many other ideas that powered economic growth and created wealth in New Brunswick.

RIP.