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Scott Cleland
President, Precursor® LLC
Chairman, NetCompetition.org®

Summary: Scott Cleland is a precursor, a prescient analyst with a long track record of industry firsts. Cleland is President of Precursor® LLC, which consults for Fortune 500 clients; authors the "widely-read" PrecursorBlog.com; publishes GoogleMonitor.com; and serves as Chairman of NetCompetition.org, a pro-competition e-forum supported by broadband interests. Eight different Congressional subcommittees have sought Cleland's expert testimony on a wide range of complex emerging issues related to competition; and Institutional Investor twice ranked him as the top independent telecom analyst in the U.S.  Cleland has been profiled in Fortune, National Journal, Barrons, WSJ's Smart Money, Investors Business Daily, and Washington Business Journal.

Track Record: Cleland has a two-decade track record of industry firsts in serving clients and the public:

  • First analyst to foresee and predict that Congress would pass legislation replacing telecom monopoly law and regulation with competition policy, and that that change would trigger substantial consolidation of the Baby Bells and also the radio industry.
  • First investment analyst to warn investors that Internet data traffic was in fact growing sixteen times slower than the market assumed, protecting investors by debunking the bogus dotcom hyper-growth story months before the dotcom market bubble burst.
  • First analyst asked to testify before Congress on how the system failed to foresee or prevent Enron's record bankruptcy precipitated by broadband trading fraud.
  • First analyst to figure out that WorldCom's business model simply didn't add up and also first to predict WorldCom's bankruptcy, the market event that propelled passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley financial and research regulations.
  • First to see the unmet common need/interests of competitive research providers by conceiving and co-founding Investorside, the first and only association of independent investment research providers.
  • First U.S. financial association chairman to require members adopt a code of ethics in order to gain association membership and certification.
  • First to identify, define, and bring together the common interests of broadband providers in opposing net neutrality legislation/regulation through NetCompetition.org.
  • First analyst to foresee, document, and develop the antitrust theories of Google as an ongoing antitrust problem and the first analyst asked to testify in Congress against Google's acquisition of more market power. (www.Googleopoly.net)
  • First analyst to identify and focus policymakers' attention on the Open Internet's growing security problem.
  • First analyst to identify and name the growing Web 2.0 "publicacy" movement that values transparency over privacy.
  • First analyst in Congressional testimony to identify and document that Google may be the biggest potential threat to Americans privacy and that a consumer-centric privacy policy framework is superior to an ad hoc technology-driven privacy policy framework.
  • First analyst to spotlight and explain the systemic destabilizing effect of indexing financial instruments on the overall financial system and capital formation.

Not surprisingly, Cleland's prescient, trenchant, and principled analysis and critiques have prompted ad hominem attacks and the ire of those threatened by his conclusions. For example:

  • WorldCom's Bernie Ebbers tried to discredit Cleland by referring to him as the "Washington idiot analyst."
  • Google tried to discredit Cleland's research that concluded Google uses 21x more bandwidth than it pays for, by calling him a "payola pundit."
  • FreePress tried to discredit Cleland for challenging and refuting FreePress' many erroneous net neutrality claims, by calling him the "Astro-Turfer-in-Chief."
  • Former Vanguard Chairman John Bogle, the leading proponent of index investing, derided Cleland's analysis -- that indexing is destabilizing and undermines capital formation and market efficiency -- as "nuts."

Private Sector Experience: Precursor® LLC, a research and consulting firm, serves Fortune 500 company clients by helping them anticipate change and position for competitive advantage. Cleland specializes in anticipating, bringing clarity-of-thought, and applying framework analysis to complex emerging Internet problems before others sort them out. Cleland is a leading expert on Google, having closely followed Google as an analyst for most of its existence, and having testified on Google's threat to competition before the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee and on Google's threat to privacy before the House Internet Subcommittee. Cleland monitors Google's increasingly disproportionate impact on Internet competition, antitrust, security, privacy, property rights, and public policy. PrecursorBlog.com, which Wired Magazine described as "widely-read," is followed by those seeking insightful analysis, thought leadership and "forward thinking at the nexus of policy markets and change." Cleland also serves as Chairman of NetCompetition.org®, a wholly-owed subsidiary of Precursor LLC and a pro-competition e-forum which provides analysis and insights for broadband telecom, cable and wireless companies.

Previously, Cleland served institutional investors as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Precursor Group® Inc. Cleland founded and co-built Precursor Group® Broker Dealer from scratch to the #1 Institutional Investor-recognized independent research firm in communications in four years. The firm served most of the top investment institutions in the U.S., including 39 of the top 50. At that time and in that role, Cleland was well-known as one of the most-widely quoted and interviewed analysts in the United States. Overall Cleland has thirteen years experience in the institutional investment business including working for Legg Mason and the Schwab Washington Research Group.

Public Service: Cleland serves as a member of the United States Department of State Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy. In 2002, Cleland conceived and was the Founding Chairman of the Investorside Research Association, the first and only association of independent research firms. Also in 2002, Institutional Investor Magazine called Cleland "the de facto spokesperson for the independent research community." During this time, he testified before Congress on both the conflicts-of-interest and accounting tricks that contributed to widespread telecom bankruptcies and Internet fraud during the dotcom market bubble. In addition, Cleland was the lead source and primary analyst for Hedrick Smith's Emmy Award winning PBS Frontline Special, "The Wall Street Fix."

Cleland's career as a public servant concluded in 1992 as the Deputy United States Coordinator for Communication and Information Policy at the U.S. Department of State, serving President H.W. Bush. Previously, Cleland served as a Senior Policy Advisor to the then Secretary of State James A. Baker III; he received the Superior Honor Award for his role as the lead congressional briefer to Secretary Baker on all foreign policy matters during the first Gulf War and the dissolution of the former Soviet Union. Prior to that, he served as Director of Legislative Affairs for the U.S. Department of Treasury and as a Budget Examiner for OMB in the U.S. Executive Office of the President.

Education: Cleland has a Masters of Public Affairs from LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and a BA in Political Science from Kalamazoo College. In 2000, Cleland earned Kalamazoo College's Distinguished Achievement Award.

www.Precursor.com
www.PrecursorBlog.com
www.NetCompetition.org

Short Biography