But Dr. Kapany became restless in academia and in 1960 his family moved to California to start a new company, Optics Technology, to commercialize his research. He started it in Palo Alto, which was developing into a technology hub, and received funding from Draper, Gaither & Anderson, one of the first venture capital firms on the West Coast.
As the company’s President and Head of Research, Dr. Kapany on product development. To run the business side, the board hired Thomas J. Perkins, a young businessman who would later hold a prominent position in Silicon Valley as the co-founder of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins.
Once again, Dr. Kapany closely matched a similarly powerful personality, and there were fireworks again. The two men’s epic, sometimes alcoholic, battles allegedly centered on where the company should go, whether products should get to market quickly – Mr. Perkins’ plan – or focus on government-funded research and development.
But there was clearly something deeper and more fundamental about their antagonism. It was “a mutual hatred for one another of almost biblical proportions,” Mr. Perkins later wrote. “I told anyone who would listen that I wanted to be engraved on my tombstone, ‘I still hate it.'”
Mr. Perkins eventually requested that the board choose between them. They chose Dr. Kapany.
Dr. Kapany took the company public in 1967, but it was already sinking under the weight of poor sales and a tight budget. In the same year he left the company and founded a new company called Kaptron in 1973, which manufactured fiber optic devices and which he later sold. In 1999 he founded another company with his son, K2 Optronics.
While finishing his career as a serial entrepreneur, Dr. Kapany never completed the academy: he taught at the University of California at Santa Cruz from 1977 to 1983 and later donated chairs at various schools at the University of California in optics and optics in Sikh studies.
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