Q. How did you get involved with the communications industry?

I was born into a telecommunications family. 

When I was five I received Santa in a sputnik to hang on the Christmas tree. The year was 1957 the year that Sputnik, the first satellite ever, took the world by storm. 

When I was 8 one of my best friends was the 60 year old head of Northrop Page. He owned the largest ham radio station in the US. I used to go over every Sunday to his house and call around the world on the Ham radio station. 

When I was ten in 1963, my dad was the head of the Office of Telecommunications Policy under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. He came to my class to talk about how satellite communications would revolutionise education and communication. He told us that in the future wars would be played out with satellites and that we would have peace on earth.. 

I grew up with Paul Baran (the father of the packet switch data network) and Vinton Cerf (the father of the TCP/IP protocol, the precursor to the Internet) being at our house. I was incredibly lucky to be surrounded with people who not only believed in the power of communication but were doing something about it. . So I have just been continuing in communications. It was the family business!

Q. What led you to start investing?

It’s the culture I was brought up in – I am an American and we were brought up to believe you can do whatever you want. You just have to work well and work hard and someone will give you a chance. I was given a lot of chances when I was getting started in business. I would like to make certain that I give those chances back to the generation of today so that we may together build and secure the generation of tomorrow.

In my family there is a strong tradition of responsibility, so if you believe something needs to done it is your responsibility to make sure it gets done. The idea of capitalism is also very strong. My father taught each of his two sons and two daughters the importance of having a business plan, even for lemonade stands when we were young. We were taught that all great ideas have to have a business plan which quite literally holds water!

Q. What was your first investment?

My first investment was when I was 23 years old and started my own company. Melodie Associates. At the time, I decided that classical music would save the world! 

I drew up a business plan, just like I did when I was little with the lemonade stands and invested 350 USD into Melodie Associates. My plan was to hold free concerts by the canal in Washington DC Georgetown, a run-down area where the local store merchants wanted to encourage people to shop. The concerts were to be sponsored by companies wishing to advertise and be associated with classical music and a good cause. 

It just so happened that the area where I wanted to hold the concerts belonged to Mobil Oil. As it happened, this was during the oil crisis and Mobil Oil wanted to show they the national law-makers in Washington D.C. that they were good citizens. They gave my company a huge amount of sponsorship. My 350 USD investment turned into a multi-million dollar business with promotions for “Concerts on the Canal sponsored by Mobil Oil” around the country, on television, etc.!

Q. What’s the best thing about being an investor?

The most important thing is making certain that you fulfil your responsibility to yourself and to the other shareholders to make a return on the investment. 

After that goal is reached it is exciting to see how your investment can positively affect lives and serve as a catalyst for other developments.

When we built SES ASTRA the bankers did not think we would make money. They thought it was only important to invest in Luxemburg because the Prime Minister of Luxemburg told them that they would get good investment credits. Then in 1989, we launched the first satellite and we were in the black within the first year. In 1990 when the deregulation in Europe was coming in, the fact that companies such as Deutsche Bank and Dresdner had invested in SES STRA , meant they could take this experience and apply it to private telecoms in Europe and lead private equity. They made lots of money and had an entire new field to work in.

From a personal point of view, when that same Prime Minister and I went to Prague in 1991, the most exciting thing for him and me was seeing all the satellite dishes in Prague pointing at our satellite. Freedom of choice in telecommunications and television viewing was one of our personal goals. But, we knew it could only be accomplished if the project was a commercial and financial success.

Q. And the worst thing?

When you are no longer in control of the investment. 

I have a great sense of personal responsibility, I always say: I never give up, I never accept no for an answer and I never go away even when others want me to. As long as you control that investment you have a personal responsibility to do everything in your power to protect your investment and that of the other shareholders. Where I have failed is when I was no longer in control, when others come in, took a majority share-holding or changed the shareholders agreement.

Q. What type of company do you invest in? 

I invest in people whom I believe have the same sense of commitment and responsibility that I do. The reason I invested in Ariadne Capital was absolutely because I felt that Julie and Bundeep had this same sense of commitment and responsibility. 

Quite frankly, I also invested in Ariadne because of Julie’s First Tuesday experience,. She had experienced a situation there where she was no longer in control and knew that from then on she had to be in control for her next venture. 

Actually, however, Ariadne Capital is an unusual investment for me; I like infrastructure and big projects. You may as well go big, as it is just as hard to raise money for little things as it is for big things. It is also just as much work and the return on investment is usually much larger. 

With my investment company, Johnson Paradigm Ventures, I try to invest only in projects which I believe will bring about a paradigm shift whether in the business model, such as with Ariadne Capital, or in technology. For instance, we have just invested in a company, which will cause a revolution in white light and energy savings, bringing about a paradigm shift. As my friend and colleague, Marcus Bicknell says, “Only the impossible things are worth doing in life.” I try to make certain that those impossible things can and will happen. 

Q. What has been your biggest success?

For me, I view everything I do as a success. Every project is my ‘baby’, and I care as much about each of my projects – for their entire lifespan. 

This can make things very difficult. I cannot just invest and walk away. I stay with it. 

Whether it is founding VATM, the private telecommunication operators association in Germany; SES ASTRA, the world’s largest satellite system; Loral Cyberstar Teleport Europe, the first and largest independent satellite communications operator in Europe; Europe Online Networks S.A., the world’s first and largest converged Broadband Internet Network via Satellite; GTWN, the Global Telecom Women’s Network; or helping do a management buy out for FMN, a wonderful East German telephone company which I have invested in; or even helping Iridium come back to life so that it can help people all over the world communicate, I stay with the project. I care about it and I do everything I can to help it survive and become a success. Sometimes it takes a very long time, but I never give up.



Q. And your biggest failure?

My biggest personal failure is if I give up trying and/or fighting – and maybe don’t realise it. Inevitably I do realise it. Even if I give up for a little while, I have friends around me who urge me to continue to try and to fight no matter how impossible or difficult it seems.

Q. How has your fund performed to date?

One has to view the fund as Candace Johnson’s investments. Over the last 25 years there is no question but that they have returned 100% per year.

Q. What qualities do you look for in an entrepreneur?

Entrepreneurs have to be geniuses and artists. They also have to have courage, leadership, and personal responsibility. They must subjugate their entire being to what they are building. 

If they are looking to just get rich, no matter how good the idea, I will not invest. If they say ‘we can change the world, this has to be done and I’ve figured out how it can be done’ then I will fight with them and invest in them. 

Q. What really sells a company to you?

Take Ariadne Capital for example, Julie is a prima-donna, in a good way, I like prima-donnas because they make things happens. 

An entrepreneur has to be able to communicate their vision and get people into that vision and sacrifice for that vision. 

Q. Where are we headed? 

The important thing is that everybody - entrepreneurs, investors, employees, stakeholders, citizens – has to exercise personal responsibility. 

Everyone in the Value Net must ask themselves. ‘ How will this investment, network or application bring about a better world? Could we do it in another way for more value, less energy? Will it create value?’

We must pose these questions and we must have a better world. 

The world has been out of sync for the last 10 years, squandering time when we could have been making the world better. 

I am 49 now. My generation does not have much time to deliver on our commitment to make the world better for the next generations and for ourselves. 

I hope in the future that we will see a heightened sense of personal responsibility. I think there will be more public/private partnerships causing a hierarchical change. I believe in the celebration of the individual as a star player helping to build a networked world where convergence of markets, people, technology, etc. will strive and survive. We need to get everyone, particularly along the North-South and Digital Divides, to participate in the shared goal of making a better world. 

Q. What would you do with your last £10,000?

Because I am an entrepreneur, a VC and a network infrastructure person, I believe the most gains will be made in digital compression algorithms and digital storage. 

Q. What's your motivation to work?

For me it is not work, it is passion. I am passionate about everything I do if I decide is important. Otherwise, I do not do it.

Q. Do you think it is harder for a woman to succeed in business?

No – I think it’s easier! And its much more fun!

Q. What would be your alternative career?

I live to do what I do – building and creating things of value, the success for which is rewarded through various ways in our society. I love doing this. I chose it. It’s not a career, it’s my life.

Q. If you could do it all again, what would you do differently?

Nothing. I’ve made mistakes but I have definitely learned from them. Mistakes teach you life’s important lessons. I may have learned the hard way, but I definitely learned and I never let life’s hard lessons get me down or change my outlook. You need to be positive and confident in life. Otherwise you cannot go out and do great things.

Q. What or who has been the biggest influence on your life?

I am fortunate to have a mother who said that no matter what – success or failure – ‘I will always love you’. It is important to have that kind of unfailing encouragement and support. 

I have also had the good chance to have about people in my life that protected me. 

In the past, usually the things I was doing were going against monopolies and bringing about a kind of revolution. They were therefore perceived by many as threats to their existence or to the continuation of life or business as they had been. 

Had it not been for the protection of great individuals who knew that I was building and creating and not destroying, I could not have done it. These were two Prime Ministers of Luxembourg, Pierre Werner and Jacques Santer who protected me during the time we were building SES ASTRA; the German Telecoms Minister, Dr. Schwarz-Schillling who protected me against the wrath of the Deutsche Telecom when I was founding the VATM; Chancellor Schroeder when he was the Prime Minister of lower Saxony and I was building Teleport Europe; Mr. Manfred Haenel, the founding managing buyout partner of FMN, the East Germany telephone company I invested in; and of course my husband and my father.

Q. How do you do to relax?

I don’t like to relax so I don’t. However, Saturdays is always Candace Day – I am cocooned. I do anything I want to do, like go to a museum. I also do not usually answer the telephone. It’s my day for regeneration

Q. What do you feel has been your greatest personal
     achievement?

The thing I have fought the hardest for is to remain positive and optimistic and to channel that into my life.

Q. Who would you most like to meet?

I have met some incredible people in my life including musicians, artists, and philosophers. One person I would have liked to meet was Marisa Bellissario, Manager of Italtel, who was a real pioneer in data/telecoms. She sadly died of breast cancer in the late 1980’s, but was an inspirational figure in the 70’s and 80’s.