I'm sure he thought that Iridium usage would appeal to a fixed or proportional fraction of the cell market . Would it? I dunno. People still use Iridium where it's appropriate.

I got a slideshow of the Iridium deployment as part of a startup JV'd by Moto circa 1999. Iridium was one big ole project. Yep.

All this being said, Iridium lasted far longer than the startup.