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Life in the Fast Lane

Notes and comments about the 1995 Inc. 500 conference from attendees and Inc.'s editor-in-chief, George Gendron.

Highlights from our annual Inc. 500 conference

It felt like history in the making as chief executives and senior managers from around the country gathered in Norfolk, Va., for the 13th annual conference of Inc. 500 companies past and present. Perhaps it was the setting. After all, we weren't far from the place where English settlers launched the first for-profit business in the New World, back in 1607. "If Inc. magazine had been around then," noted Governor George Allen in his welcoming remarks, "the Virginia Company wouldn't just have been the number one company on the Inc. 500. It would have been the only company on the list."

Adding to the sense of occasion was a special preconference briefing at the White House, attended by some 150 Inc. 500 CEOs. Afterward, they traveled to Norfolk, where they were joined by more than 1,100 other attendees for three days of speeches, seminars, and roundtables led by some of the most accomplished business advisers, investors, observers, and practitioners in the country. And when the talking was done, they boogied until the wee hours of the morning at the black-tie party following the awards ceremony. One Inc. 500 CEO played with a band called the Pink Flamingos, while others did snake dances around the room. "Man, there's no chance anyone would mistake this for a Fortune 500 event," said a Flamingo. Truly historic.

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"Will program for food."

-- Former Entrepreneur of the Year Mitchell Kertzman's credo when he launched the company that eventually became Powersoft, which he sold in February for $950 million

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Final Grade: Mike Molony of Pet Ventures (#220 in 1992) was surprised to run into Craig Skevington of FACT Inc. (#236 in 1994), whom he'd last seen nine years before at an executive M.B.A. course at the Wharton School. As part of the course, they'd had to write business plans, which they then used to launch their respective companies. Molony says his got a higher grade -- which may or may not explain why his company made the list two years earlier.

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"I generally hire people with the same character qualities I have. The problem is, I always end up fighting with them."

-- Comment of a frustrated CEO during a seminar on hiring the best employees

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Reinvention was the hot topic at this conference, as we kept running into Inc. 500 CEOs who were moving from one business to another. Case in point: Jan Koal of Right Byte Computer Center (#327 in 1993), a computer store in Pullman, Wash. After last year's conference, he began to provide computer training for another Inc. 500 company. He says he now spends most of his time in his new business -- education.

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"They say, 'We don't like to talk to you when you have your CEO voice on."

-- Rhoda Makoff of R&D Laboratories (#304 in 1994), on why her daughters won't call her at work

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The most disturbing statistic came from Michael Treacy, who predicted that a typical $1-billion company would be staffed by about 1,000 people within a few years, compared with about 7,000 today. That leaves 6,000 unemployed, but don't count on the Inc. 500 to hire them. Many attendees said they were so frustrated with managing that they wished they could figure out how to run their companies without employees.

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"At any given time 3 million people are starting companies in the United States. That's more people than are getting married and more than are having children."

-- Paul Reynolds, professor of entrepreneurship at Marquette University, on a more hopeful effect of corporate downsizing

Key Notes
"There was a wonderful moment when my six-year-old daughter said, 'So, Mom, are all bosses women?' And I said, 'The good ones, honey."

-- Marion McGovern of M2 (#223 in 1994)

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"I work with billion-dollar companies," said Michael Treacy, coauthor of The Discipline of Market Leaders and the opening keynote speaker at this year's Inc. 500 conference. "I have to say it's good to finally meet all the SOBs who are giving them so much trouble."

He went on to remind his listeners of their competitive advantages. "Believe me when I tell you that large companies don't worry about competition from each other. Dow doesn't worry about Du Pont, and Du Pont doesn't worry about GE Plastics. They all worry about the companies that come from nowhere. . . . The greatest opportunity in business today is having a clean sheet of paper." It was a point not lost on an audience made up mostly of CEOs whose companies didn't exist a decade ago.

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Pass It On: Seated at the same table during lunch one day were two men who had each founded a natural-gas company in Oklahoma and then taken it to the Inc. 500. One of the companies, Ward Petroleum, had made the list in 1991 (at #125), 1992 (at #61), and 1993 (at #62), while the other, Gale Force Compression, earned its spot (#110) in 1994. An amazing coincidence? Not exactly. The two men are father and son. "You could say that my son Bill bumped me off the list," said Lew Ward of Ward Petroleum.

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