* * *
WURTS: Well, I started my business because I wanted to make money, but I wouldn't have started it if I hadn't also had a vision for a product. And that's why I didn't start a second business. After I sold MDS, I had the cash, I had the people, I had everything I needed -- except I couldn't find a vision for a product to get excited about. If I had, I guarantee I would have started another company from scratch. It had to be a big idea -- that's the problem.
* * *
KRISS: Now there are these venture funds buying companies and doing deals to make money as the number-one motivating factor. It's all been institutionalized. Instead of a visionary entrepreneur saying he'll put together his own company and do it for reasons beyond the fact that he's going to make an economic return, you now have people with M.B.A.s whose only reason for doing it is economic return.
* * *
KRAVETZ: Wait a minute. Their vision is money, your vision was some particular product. There's nothing wrong with their vision.
* * *
KRISS: I can name lots of examples of deals that were done recently without any overriding strategic vision of any kind other than a good way to make 10 times on your money instead of 3 times.
* * *
KRAVETZ: If you find a way to make 10 times more that way than any other way, what's wrong with that?
* * *
KRISS: It's short term, that's what's wrong.
* * *
GOLDHIRSH: What's wrong with it is that we're not building things of enduring value. It's like playing chess: the game may be challenging, but when it's over, nothing's been built.
* * *
KRISS: Here's a typical cycle: an entrepreneur builds a company and sells it to an enterprise that doesn't have the same kind of personal investment he does. It has purely financial motives. A year or two later the company's a complete wreck. There's no transfer of vision from the entrepreneur; no one else has that kind of direction.
* * *
WURTS: But that problem stems from the entrepreneur. He builds up the company and it becomes successful. Then he says I need to do something else, I'm no longer the right guy to run this, let the operating guys do it. What happens is, its world changes. Then the business needs that vision again. The people in it don't recognize the world as changed, and they run the company as before. Reacting to change is what the entrepreneur is good at, yet he's gone.
* * *
MORGAN: I think you're right. In fact, an entrepreneur causes change.
* * *
INC.: How did you all take care of your employees?
* * *
KRISS: MediVision had some 500 employees, of whom 450 were in the field. They were going to be there no matter what. It was the 50 people or so in Boston that I was concerned about. Of those, top management was 10 or 12, and I knew realistically that at least half wouldn't survive. That was tough. But today, they're all talking to me.
* * *
INC.: You could have taken them and started another business with them.
* * *
KRISS: You can't do that. It's like if you took your grown-up children and decided you were going to re-create your family when they were kids. For example, the guy who took over as president as my replacement at MediVision started out as my corporate counsel. He developed tremendously during those years. You can't turn the clock back and say, OK, let's go back to the way we were.
* * *
INC.: Did anyone set up the people left behind with employment contracts?
* * *
MORGAN: I didn't demand employment contracts, because I was sure our people would earn their way. But one thing I did convince Dynatech to do was set up an incentive stock option plan. I hadn't carried out all my promises to my people, so I got Dynatech to do it.
* * *
INC.: If any of you were to start another business now, would you predict it would be easier or harder?
* * *
WURTS: It would be harder. When I was looking for companies to start after I sold, I must have found a dozen situations where I said if I were 25 years old, I would do it. Instead, I said, well, that's impossible.
* * *
GOLDHIRSH: But you have more knowledge.
* * *
MORGAN: More knowledge -- and less energy. And the need is less.
* * *
KRAVETZ: And you're not willing to put everything at risk to accomplish it.
* * *
INC.: Is there a difference in deciding what to do next, now that you've got a lot of cash to fool around with?
* * *
KRISS: I don't know many who have sold their company and, when they start a second project, put their own money in.
* * *
WURTS: You've spent all that time trying to get the money, the last thing you want to do is bet it on the next roll of dice.
* * *
KRISS: One thing I realize is right now I'm not interested in starting another company, although I've had opportunities. I'm much more interested in fixing a company, going down the sort of path that Jay went. At first I thought the reason I didn't want to start a company is I've seen how damn hard it is. Then I understood that wasn't the real reason. What was troubling me was the realization that the start-up would have to be much more spectacular than what I had just done to give me the same satisfaction, and the likelihood of that happening was small.
* * *
INC.: Since you've sold, are any of you involved with civic or charitable causes?
* * *
WURTS: Maybe it's outrageous, but I've always assumed I could contribute more by creating a successful company and creating jobs and making better products and using Yankee ingenuity, now that American business is involved in a world battle.
* * *
ALL: Without question. Absolutely right.
