The Founders

What sorts of people launch growth companies, anyway?

And why?

Some left big-company jobs; many never had them. Some always planned to start a business; others never dreamed their hobbies might become vocations. The founders of Inc. 500 businesses sometimes appear driven to company building by as many different motives as there are names on the list. But the truth, we insist, is otherwise. Look closely, listen hard, and patterns emerge from the sewing-bee quilt of entrepreneurial impulses. Types appear. Ask founders What Made Them Do It, and some reasons just keep coming up.

Here are a few of them.

The 'Working for Ourselves Was Obvious' Naturals

Joel, Jon, and David Field; #131
Field Brothers Construction, Marion, Ohio
$8.4 million in sales; 120 employees

"My brother Jon and I have always been close because we were twins. We did everything together. We were farmers, but when we graduated from high school, the farming industry wasn't too strong, and Dad said there wasn't enough for all of us to do. Jon stayed at the farm, and I went to work in a factory and entered Ohio State. After just a couple of months I decided I didn't like either, and Jon and I had always wanted to work together, so we went into business. [Older brother David joined them later.]

"We couldn't decide between carpet cleaning and construction, either of which we could get into with little investment. I had business cards made up for both, but construction actually was cheaper, so we got a couple of paintbrushes and a couple of ladders and started painting houses. It really didn't matter how much money we made, because we weren't making much money at the time, anyway. They were trying times. But we always had the camaraderie of each other. We had fun.

"I never pictured working for anyone else. From a very young age I was working hard, milking cows two times a day, always working for myself, my family." -- Joel Field

The Glass-Ceiling Refugee

Judith Armstrong; #262
ADA Technologies, Englewood, Colo.
$1.8 million in sales; 20 employees

Judith Armstrong's difficulty in trying to advance at Hughes Aircraft wasn't just that she was female -- "as a woman in mathematics, I've always been the one woman in a room full of men" -- but that the company kept bringing in managers from outside offices. "There was not an attitude of growing from the inside," Armstrong says.

She served as technical director for a $25-million data-processing project for Hughes, but, she says, "when I finished, they didn't have a project for me. I'd just delivered this big thing to the government, I felt really good and high about what I'd accomplished, and there was no follow-up. So I sat around for a couple of months and got bored."

The result: Armstrong split and, with three partners, founded her own R&D company, funded primarily by Small Business Innovation Research grants. She's now putting together a sister company, ADA Instruments, to market the technologies that were developed. "There's been enormous personal growth on my part as I've become someone who really wants to drive this commercialization process, maybe start a manufacturing company. I didn't set out to grow into this person, but I became her anyway."

The Hobbyists Who Got a Little out of Hand

Gerald, Scott, Judy, and Kim Kruger; #121
Baseball Card World, Anderson, Ind.
$13.9 million in sales; 63 employees

Marvel comics, Planet of the Apes memorabilia, 1940s first-edition paperbacks -- everybody, at some time, has collected something. Only the lucky ones, though, stumble into turning their hobby into a $14-million business.

The tale of the Kruger family reads like a Disney script. Son collects baseball cards -- what else? -- in Indiana bedroom. Starts selling off complete 1955-1977 sets when he's 15. Goes to card shows, buying and selling. Gets set up by father in a small trading shop, "just to give him spending money." Carries card-protection sheets. Places ads in sports magazines to sell sheets nationally. Mother quits job at General Motors plant four years later, in 1985, to work in growing mail-order business. Father leaves GM two years after that, as does daughter two years further on.

Today Baseball Card World is a manufacturer as well as a distributor of supplies for collectors. "This business has far exceeded any goals we ever talked about," says son Scott, who heads up purchasing and operations. "One thing I try to stay away from these days is turning my hobbies into businesses," he adds, admitting he's thought about buying the racetrack where he drives stock cars. "Not that I regret the one I've got. But sometimes hobbies need to stay hobbies."

The 'I Can Do It Better Than My Old Boss' Opportunist

Mark Cohn; #6
Damark International, Minneapolis
$194 million in sales; 500 employees

A Seiko combination computer/watch: Mark Cohn and David Russ knew it was a sure thing. After abandoning stable jobs at a fast-growing retailer of discounted merchandise when the company brought in professional management, they had become wholesalers, supplying their former employer. But the company declined to pick up the Seiko doodad -- though Cohn, who'd nabbed an option on 6,000 of them, made his pitch four times -- and the two men figured it would be stupid not to sell the watches themselves.

After launching a little black-and-white catalog, Damark (a combination of Cohn's and Russ's first names) continued to seek new products for the old company while adding the rejects to its own offerings. But a few months later Cohn and Russ were called on the carpet. Either be a supplier or be a competitor, said their former boss. You can't be both.