Looking for Mr. Right

Don't you wish you could locate, attract, and hire that one big-league player you need to push your company to the next level? That seasoned rainmaker, finance wizard, or operations whip who'd enable you to do what you do best? Jeff Braun wished so, too

A year ago I wrote a short item about Maxis, a rising software developer with a string of best-selling simulation games. Maxis had earned success by riding the distribution coattails of Broderbund Software, itself a fast-growing software publisher. Their arrangement wasn't unusual in the game business, but Maxis's software had sold especially well. At the end of my conversations with Maxis chief executive Jeff Braun, he mentioned that the Broderbund arrangement had run its course, and he'd recently hired his first vice-president of sales. He'd recruited Sam Poole directly from Walt Disney Computer Software, where Poole had been head of sales. Braun's voice, usually flat, betrayed awe -- as if he couldn't quite believe his good fortune. He encouraged me to talk to Poole.

Disney Software. What could have lured an executive away from the Magic Kingdom? When I finally caught up with Poole, some months later, I learned that Maxis's VP was an alum of Procter & Gamble and also of Polaroid. He had even run a company of his own. It had been his plan to spend the rest of his career at Disney, Poole, 46, said.

After a year with Maxis, it certainly looked as if Poole had made a good move. He was already VP of sales and marketing as well as general manager. "At Disney that would have taken 10 years," he told me. Besides initiating a U.S. sales force, he'd opened Maxis's first overseas sales office. And most impressive, Poole had revived sales of Maxis's aging flagship product. "It's worked out perfectly," Braun, 38, affirmed.

I couldn't help thinking that if Maxis could land Sam Poole, there was hope for other small companies searching for Mr. or Ms. Right. I'd heard from CEOs who dreaded the idea of finding a sales manager and didn't know where to start. And even more often, I'd heard CEOs express their anxiety about finding the person who could take their companies to that mythic "next level," open bigger doors, and kick some professionalism into their seat-of-the-pants sales operations. Surely, plenty of talent was available, what with layoffs and the uncertainty of big-company life these days. But here at Inc., we'd heard countless tales of horrendous clashes between big-company veterans and the small companies that hire them.

So, what made the Braun-Poole relationship click? I visited Maxis last November to find out.

Orinda, Calif. -- population, 16,700 -- is a bedroom community boasting great schools, little crime, and an easy commute to San Francisco ($4.10 round-trip on BART). It's a town where the cops recognize all the cars that "belong," and it's home to Maxis, the software publisher known for such simulation software toys as the top-selling mayor-for-a-day game, SimCity, and the more recent SimHealth.

Maxis is a company with an attitude. A Washington Post reviewer noted that "Maxis software stands out because these are programs with a platform." And with 95 employees, five-year-old Maxis also stands out as the town's number one employer. "After us, it's the Safeway," says Maxis's laconic Braun.

Maxis's headquarters are in a small mall that mirrors the buying habits of SimCity's upscale core audience, but there's nothing pretentious about the company. Employees who wish to use the bathroom step outside to the public facilities. Maxis's "entertainment room" houses pinball machines and an ancient movie-theater popcorn machine, and Braun's windows frame mountains crisscrossed by utility wires and poles. It's neither picturesque nor opulent, but it's comfortable.

To the citizens of Orinda, unassuming Maxis is the great corporate hope. "They've got a good thing," says the owner of the Squirrel's Nest, the mall's country knickknack store. "I'm buying the stock as soon as they go public."

Maxis rose fast from its basement days. It took two full years to create SimCity, but in 1989 first-year sales hit $3 million. Last year sales broke $20 million. Maxis has made Orinda into one of those entrepreneurial outposts that now dot the country. Still, Maxis is not a household name.

A decidedly glitzier entrepreneurial landmark shimmers about 260 miles south, in Burbank, Calif.: the Disney legacy. In addition to its vast entertainment properties, Disney comprises a catalog division (Disney Direct), a budding magazine empire ( Discover, Family Fun, Disney Adventures), a National Hockey League franchise (the Mighty Ducks), and Disney Software.

Sam Poole entered that scene in January 1991 as director of sales at Disney Software. Though probably the least known of the Disney companies, it offered him the chance to make his mark at the world's most creative corporation. For a boy raised in the darkness of a Pennsylvania mining town, the view couldn't be much brighter.

"I felt that Disney would give me the opportunity to really stretch, to take advantage of those intellectual properties, the characters, the name." He was sure he'd never leave, and within a year he'd moved into his dream house, outside Malibu, "the home I thought I was going to retire in."

Poole's experience made him a welcome addition to Disney. During the 1970s he'd worked at Procter & Gamble (where he learned sales discipline) and Polaroid (where he learned to be creative), and in 1983 he turned to the software business and rescued a small company partly owned by Gillette. It was, Poole says, "my introduction to this nutzo field." He moved on to another struggling software developer, called Cinemaware. There, he says, "I was to advise the owners on marketing and international sales, but I ended up running the place."

By then Poole had decidedly mixed feelings about working for any more start-ups. He has unpleasant memories of "waking up at 2 a.m., worrying, 'Am I gonna make payroll?' I thought maybe the answer was getting back into a corporate environment again."

With Mickey and friends, Disney was poised to cash in on the interactive-entertainment and education markets. Its success with a Roger Rabbit computer game had persuaded Disney, in 1988, to create a unit under the Consumer Products Group. Two years later Disney Software introduced a pricey first product to underwhelming response.