Calix shipped its first product in December 2001, more than two years after its founding and in the middle of the telecom crash. The Petaluma company built access equipment, the gear that links a phone company's network to homes and businesses over copper and fiber. Its best customers were small and regional providers, not the giants. When Calix went public in March 2010, many of those providers were using federal stimulus money to run fiber into rural towns.

Built in a Downturn

Calix was founded in August 1999 and spent its early years building the C-Series, a platform that could deliver voice, data and video over either copper or fiber. Then the telecom bubble burst and carriers stopped spending. Calix survived by focusing on hundreds of independent and rural telephone companies across the United States. They needed to replace aging copper lines with fiber and wanted a supplier that would treat them as more than an afterthought.

Thirteen Dollars, Then Software

Calix priced its offering at $13 a share in March 2010 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange under CALX, raising about $82 million with selling holders. In 2011 it bought Occam Networks, a rival in the same market. Hardware margins stayed thin. Under chief executive Carl Russo, Calix moved toward cloud software and services that help broadband providers market to and support their subscribers. It remains public on the NYSE.

Cover: A Chalice, Wenceslaus Hollar. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a chalice (Calix, Latin for cup).