Indeed, many in the 30-and-younger set take pride in what they describe as a lack of hierarchy within their organizations. The idea of managing from the top down makes many of them uneasy. "People don't like feeling that you're the boss and they're the employees," notes Brian Shniderson, 27, who cofounded Premiere Merchandising (#64) with his cousin Greg Klein, 25, when they were undergraduates at UCLA. "So we give them lots of autonomy and good benefits. We've got lots of deadlines, so it requires a total team effort, or else the road gets pretty bumpy."
For some, a flatter organization is also appealing economically. "Managers and supervisors cost a lot of money," explains Chuang of MacTemps, who recently got his M.B.A. from Harvard. So rather than build up layers, he's investing in technology and computers to handle some of the things supervisors do in other companies. "This way," Chuang says, "our people will be doing more interesting work, and we'll be able to pay them better."
As fervently as young founders talk about the importance of giving employees responsibility, not many have shared ownership with them. Only a third of the group say they have given any equity to employees. And though only a few rule it out, most say they haven't thought much about it. Like Paul Taunton of Athletic Fitters (#323), they're convinced that, for now, young people are more interested in compensation and interesting work than in owning a piece of the business.
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And what about these founders themselves? By now most of them have been involved in their businesses for 6 or 7 years. After a blur of 80-hour weeks, some say they really don't feel so young. "My girlfriend says I look 10 years older than I am," notes Cardboard Gold's Mayes, who recently turned 26. While many of their friends are still struggling to get established in their careers, these CEOs are already grappling with questions usually reserved for their elders: What role do they want to play in the business? And where are they needed?
For some, the choice is clear. "I used to be on call at all hours, putting out fires, but now we have other people who can do that," says Roscoe of MBS Communications. He used to go without vacations, but since he got married, last December, he's taken four weeks off. Likewise, Tom Mosey of D&K Enterprises (#137), a publisher of children's books, spends a lot of his time acting as a cheerleader, and he's cut way back on weekend work. "For almost a year my wife and I have been going to our lake house every Friday," he says. "She won't tell me the phone number."
For others, redefining their jobs has been anything but easy. Some who've balked at giving up responsibility are fearful of what might happen if they don't and what might happen if they do; others who've booted themselves upstairs don't seem happy with where they are. "I miss the excitement of the trenches," says Crown of Insight Distribution Network, who says he spends a lot of his time on legal and administrative problems. "It's not nearly as much fun as it was in the first few years."
So what will they do next? About a third of them speculate about selling their companies or taking them public in the next few years, at which point a few think they'd go out and start something else. And what about the ones who don't talk about selling? Well, for the next 10 years or so they plan to work toward taking their businesses to the next stage -- hitting revenues of, say, $40 million or $50 million. Some are thinking about ways to diversify their products, others about exporting. And for many more, the big challenge is learning how to do a better job in the markets they're already in. "I really can't see selling for at least 10 or 20 years," says 30-year-old Michael Koch of Koch International (#315). "I guess I don't know what I'd do with the money."
Money is clearly something most have thought about. But a lot of them profess to be less focused on financial success now than when they started. Maybe it's because they don't have to worry as much about meeting payroll, or because they're already more successful than they'd ever imagined. But what motivates them today has less to do with their net worth and more to do with how they're viewed by others: their customers, their employees, even their competitors. "I don't feel we have to be the biggest," says Noble of Noble Oil, "but I do want to be recognized by people in our industry as being innovative and well managed. That would be very satisfying for me."
In this age of environmentalism, you'd expect this group to have grand visions about their impact on the world -- how their businesses will make the planet cleaner or safer or prettier. But though they talk about their personal commitments to causes -- to the environment and to helping people and communities through charities -- the business, they maintain, needs to be handled separately. It's as if they were saying, "We're not kids, we're businesspeople." And now that they have others counting on them -- customers, employees, spouses, and children -- their first obligation is to make sure the business grows and makes money. As Levin of Cadapult Graphic Systems puts it, "We want to make things better, but we're not Ben & Jerry's."
-- Research assistance provided by Merritt T. Carey,
Christopher P. Fontes, Stephanie Gruner, AndrewS. A. Macaulay, and Rachel S. Tsutsumi
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THE UPSTARTS
Here, in alphabetical order, are the Inc. 500 companies whose founders were born in 1962 or later.
Applied Computer Technology (#257)
Athletic Fitters (#323)
BitWise Designs (#79)
Boston Preparatory (#416)
Cadapult Graphic Systems (#72)
Cardboard Gold (#74)
Creative Producers Group (#329)
Cucci International (#474)
D.J. King Trucking & Excavating (#123)
D&K Enterprises (#137)
Federal Investment (#36)
Gateway 2000 (#2)
Glitterwrap (#38)
Griffis/Blessing (#361)
Inside Communications (#239)
Insight Distribution Network (#5)
IVT Limited (#241)
J and M Laboratories (#487)
Koch International (#315)
MacTemps (#12)
MBS Communications (#368)
Micro-Frame Technologies (#50)
Noble Oil Services (#196)
Premiere Merchandising (#64)
Small Systems Management (#223)
Southern Audio Services (#255)
Staff Relief (#44)
Summit Marketing Group (#88)
SWFTE International (#166)
Union Pointe Construction (#205)
