25 Years and Counting
I launched my advisory business 25 years ago, at the height of the tech bubble. The idea was straightforward: serve as an interim corporate development and strategic adviser to early-stage companies that neither needed nor could afford a full-time executive — or, in some cases, an experienced and specialized problem solver.
One of my first engagements came when a VC friend asked me to assess a young company called Visage Mobile, which offered an “MVNO in a box” — enabling brands to launch their own mobile services.
Over the next 2½ years, we built something real. Virgin Mobile and Boost had just launched successfully, MVNOs were new and full of promise, and we secured marquee customers including Disney Mobile, Mobile ESPN, and Embarq. Visage raised $80 million and grew rapidly. As the company matured and emphasis shifted from business development to implementation, I returned to my advisory practice.
Not long afterward, Disney learned I had left Visage and brought me into its corporate strategy group through Imagineering to advise on global mobile strategy. I started a week later.
Every engagement over the past 25 years has come through referral — in many cases, from previously referred and satisfied clients. That is not an accident. It is the only scorecard that matters.
Most of my engagements have begun the same way: a conversation. Someone reaches out with a challenge, an opportunity or a question about a company, technology, market or potential partner. The discussion deepens, ideas emerge, approaches take shape, and if the chemistry is right, we move forward at a pace that works for the client.
The obstacles clients faced were rarely failures of vision. More often, talented young teams lacked experience in highly specialized arenas. Carrier relationships, for example, can feel like a black art to those who did not grow up in the industry. An old mentor’s line — attributed to Walt Kelly’s Pogo — captured the dynamic perfectly: “Gentlemen, we are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.”
Everyone brings a different lens to problem solving. Mine was shaped early. Having worked my way through college and law school in sales, I have always thought of myself first as a salesperson. Corporate development, to me, is simply the highest form of the trade.
My legal training and industry background help me understand what matters to the person across the table — what they need, what concerns them, and what they hope the relationship will become. If a workable solution exists inside what appears insurmountable, I can usually find it.
Many young companies lack the narrative, presentation or strategic framing needed to move a relationship forward. A clear message, disciplined preparation, a thoughtful agenda and the ability to read the room can determine whether the proverbial “good meeting” produces results or simply fills a calendar. Clients often need more than introductions. They need an interpreter, a guide, a Sherpa.
Not every effort succeeds. Some mountains are simply too steep. But as an adversary once told me, “The trouble with you, Bluestein, is you don’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”
Guilty as charged! In that case, I found another executive who recognized the opportunity, delivered the new product I was seeking, and helped propel my client to the top of Inc. magazine’s list of fastest-growing service companies.
When the first cellular license applications were filed in 1982, no one knew how large mobile communications would become. Investors and entrepreneurs saw it as “the next big thing” and took the gamble. They were right — by orders of magnitude that no one anticipated.
The economic value of the entire global mobile ecosystem amounted to $7.6 trillion in 2025, roughly equal to 6.4% of global GDP, according to GSMA, with little sign of abatement. Data, IoT, devices, new spectrum, satellite connectivity, artificial intelligence, new players and entirely new communications architectures continue to redraw the landscape. And ever closer to the goal of ubiquitous coverage and connectivity.
Today’s operators are less focused on customer ownership and more willing to pursue profitable growth wherever it emerges, making the industry structurally more accessible than it once was. Yet for companies outside telecommunications, where connectivity is an enabler rather than the core business, the complexity remains. The need for experienced navigation has not diminished. If anything, it has grown.
Twenty-five years after founding Bluestein & Associates, my work still begins the same way: with a conversation. I won’t pretend the years haven’t added up. What I value most now is clients who became friends, and my network of industry colleagues who recognized what I brought to the table and referred new clients to me. And I value the moments, scattered across decades, when the right connection at the right time changed the trajectory of a client’s company.
This work is about helping people find common ground — across industries, across negotiating tables, across the gap between where a company is and where it could be.
I still love my work. And I am grateful, above all, to the people who taught me so much, trusted me, and gave me opportunities and experience so that I could help others.
Twenty-five years and going strong, thanks to you.
