Brief profiles of 15 Inc. 500 companies and their founders.
Company Profiles
1 GEORGE LEWIS
Cogentrix
"When I started this company, I had to learn finance at the age of 54. I had to look good in the eyes of all these bright and shiny M.B.A.s."
The Company Cogentrix is the first company to take the number-one spot on the Inc. 500 for two years in a row.
Credit in part the huge leap in revenues the company had from 1985 to 1986 -- from $133,000 to $17 million -- when its cogeneration facilities began full-tilt production of electricity for utilities and steam for manufacturing com-panies in three North Carolina cities.
Lewis founded Cogentrix on the premises that coal burning can be cleaner than its image and that the supply of coal is more stable than that of oil or gas, a proposition certainly borne out this year.
The Founder Lewis was "born and dragged up in the streets of Brooklyn," son of a teacher and a draftsman. He took his street smarts to Con Edison and then two engineering firms before starting his company.
Despite its size, Cogentrix is a family business: Lewis holds 52% of the equity, and the other 48% is held by his three sons, who are managers.
46 DONALD EMERY
Reference Software International
"I think I was always fascinated but intimidated by the idea of running my own company. I never had that natural affinity."
The Company As a marketing professor, Emery encouraged his students to use word processors. "The papers looked nicer," he says, "but there was still incredibly bad writing, grammar, and spelling." So Emery and partner Bruce Wampler founded a company to solve those problems. They first developed a pop-up dictionary for computers; later came a breakthrough program, Grammatik, which flags awkward phrases in text.
"Most people who don't write for a living don't realize that the skill of writing really is in the revision stage," says Emery. "This program makes it easier to do that."
The company's next step: marketing French and German grammar checkers in Europe.
The Founder Emery did a stint at R. J. Reynolds before getting a Ph.D. in marketing. In 1975 he began teaching; he's now on sabbatical from San Francisco State University.
"Despite all my education, I am a very, very bad speller," he says.
89 RON ZWANZIGER
MediSense
We were close to running out of cash a number of times. Compared with that, nothing today is very difficult."
The Company When Zwanziger and three other students at Harvard Business School founded their bio-technology company, in 1981, their strategy was to invent and tinker with 10 products. Surely, they figured, one would hit big.
In 1984 MediSense began honing in on one product -- bio-sensors used by diabetics to read their blood-sugar levels. Then the money began pouring in: $60 million from investors so far, used in large part to develop an extensive international direct-sales force. Revenues from the user-friendly line hit $30 million last year, up from just $2 million two years previously. Zwanziger plans to take MediSense public in early 1991.
"A company with a sales force worldwide is a better company in the long run," he says. "And we make more money this way."
The Founder Zwanziger grew up in Cyprus, then was educated in Great Britain. He received an engineering degree from Imperial College at London University before attending Harvard Business School.
108 CLEMON H. WESLEY
TEXCOM
"Schools teach African Americans to go out and get 8:00-to-5:00 jobs. Very little suggests to them that they might want to start their own businesses."
The Company TEXCOM, a telecommunications and engineering services firm, takes advantage of the 25 years Wesley spent in the army by pursuing contracting work for the military. Now, with the changing political climate, the company pursues more private-sector jobs. "The whole world is retrenching," says Wesley, "and in this marketplace people are doing whatever it takes to win jobs."
The Founder Wesley's parents were sharecroppers in Texas. He went into the army in 1957, rising from second lieutenant to colonel; he also got an M.S. in communications and a law degree. After leaving the army, he started his company in his basement in 1982.
Today Wesley is president of the National Business League of Southern Maryland and spends time on mentoring programs for the minority community: "I have business mixers, training programs -- all designed to try to get minority businesses into the mainstream of this economy."
136 WILLIAM GINN
Resource Conservation Services
"I do sometimes miss the informality of the early years, working on dead reckoning -- the nautical term for navigating by the seat of your pants."
The Company Ginn was operating a farm in Maine part-time and asked a paper company if he could have some of its wood ash for fertilizer. The company, which had been paying to dump the ash, asked if Ginn wanted all 40,000 tons. Soon he arranged for other farmers to take the ash as well; eventually he had a company that expanded into commercial recycling, composting, and wastewater treatment.
"In truth," says Ginn, "I think we're all astonished at how well RCS has performed."
The Founder Ginn spent 10 years at the Maine Audubon Society, 6 as executive director, taking the budget from $90,000 to $1.5 million. "I think of Audubon as my first start-up."
Farming remains Ginn's first love: "It's very grounding to drive a tractor or rototill a garden or plant a crop. It's an important touchstone with the earth. I don't pretend I'm a great farmer, but it's something I enjoy."
