April 22, 2003 -- Brandon Freeman has been promoted to chief executive officer of LayerOne, a Dallas-based provider of interconnection and infrastructure services to communication service providers.
Freeman is a co-founder of LayerOne and had served as COO since 1999. He replaces Alexander Muse, who is now serving as CEO of Architel, a Dallas provider of outsourced IT services.
Freeman has been responsible for the day-to-day management of LayerOne since its inception, including oversight of engineering, national service deployment and sales and marketing.
"I'm bullish on this space," said Freeman. "The more you see the competition going away, the more this becomes a good opportunity for a financially solid provider. Here in Dallas, we've had four or five of the majors shut down large data centers."
The company's facilities include data centers at 2323 Bryan (The Univision Building) in Dallas, .
LayerOne is also managing the meet-me-room and telecom infrastructure at 400 South Akard, the former Federal Reserve bulding in Dallas, which was acquired in January by a group that included LayerOne investors.
"We're looking at other opportunities in the area of partnering with building owners," said Freeman, who added that LayerOne is actively seeking acquisition properties. "We have several opportunities were looking at on the East Coast right now. I think you're going to see a lot of consolidation in the next 24 to 36 months."
LayerOne was founded in 1999, and received $12 million in venture capital funding in early 2000. By late 2000 it was operating data centers in Dallas, Miami and Chicago, and had plans to expand into at least 12 more markets.
As the market for colocation services tanked, those additional leases, those expansion plans were shelved. "We had this operating burn driven by empty buildings," said freeman. So LayerOne made a quick trip through bankruptcy court, primarily to shed leases in markets where it no longer planned to offer services. The company emerged from Chapter 11 in August 2001.
By February 2002 the company was EBITDA positive, and it reached free cash flow profitability in October 2002.
"We had huge growth in 2002," said Freeman. "I don't know if it was pent-up demand from 2001 or customers switching from other providers, but we had good steady growth all year."
Prior to forming LayerOne, Mr. Freeman served as a corporate and securities attorney at Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati P.C. and Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P. Mr. Freeman is also a founder and board member of Cypress Industries, an electronics manufacturing company located in Austin, Texas.
LayerOne facilitates transactions between some of the world's largest communications service providers including: Worldcom, Qwest, Cable & Wireless, Verizon, Bell South, Southwestern Bell, Global Crossing, TXU, Florida Power & Light, Progress Telecom and Level 3.