Eldredge and Reynolds are among the 15 or so entrepreneurs for whom Pitassi is attempting to be what he calls a "bridge builder." The term comes from a poem by that name (by Will Allen Dromgoole) of which Pitassi is particularly fond. It tells of an old man who builds a bridge across a chasm even though he won't ever be returning that way because "There followeth after me today / A youth whose feet must pass this way. / This chasm that has been naught to me / To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be."
When he was 5 years old, Pitassi began accompanying his father, a men's clothing salesman whom he calls his "number-one mentor," on business trips. Invariably, some of the old-timers would take the youngster aside and fill him with folksy aphorisms like "God gave you two ears and only one mouth, so learn to listen." Pitassi took this advice: while building Drypers, he recalls "getting so much out of" even brief conversations with mentors. Pitassi now feels it's his turn to be a bridge builder. As he says, "I've slain my dragon. Now I want to protect others from what I went through."
So Pitassi launched a company that would allow him to spend focused time advising other entrepreneurs. The new business is set up to be as nonconstricting for Pitassi as possible: it has one full-time employee (hint--his initials are D.P.) and two part-timers. It operates out of his home office (or wherever D.P. happens to be) and has an outdoor conference table beside the river in his backyard. Pitassi participates in companies ranging in size from $5 million to $50 million, as well as in some true start-ups, in the various roles of "partner's partner, manager's manager, or entrepreneur's entrepreneur," he says. Typically this means Pitassi will invest in, join the board of, or serve in an advisory capacity to a company in return for (usually modest) fees or equity stakes.
In spite of his best intentions of running this new company in a controlled, sane way, Pitassi, creator of what was once the fastest-growing private company in America, is already showing some signs of chafing under that constraint. For starters, there's the company's name. Pitassi admits that he chose Gazelle Group "because I was looking for a name that represents fast growth," yet concedes the obvious irony, given that he is attempting to slow down (and encouraging others to do the same). While at Drypers, he became an expert in what he calls the judo technique of marketing: taking foes' momentum and using it against them--a clever maneuver that gained the company national headlines. (See " Targeting the Giant," October 1993.)
At the Gazelle Group, Pitassi is once again engaging in a novel marketing technique, this one with no momentum at all. There is no listing for Gazelle Group in either the Vancouver or the Portland area; Pitassi does have business cards, but few people ever see them as he rarely hands them out. "I collect business cards rather than distribute them," he says. He has a cell phone, too, but he stopped giving out that number 18 months ago. "I still have a hard time with that one, but if I gave it out, I would respond to everything and everybody," he admits. The only attempt he makes to allow people to find him is to give out his voice-mail number at Drypers' Vancouver office. "Come to think of it, it was kind of a pain to get a hold of him," recalls Eldredge.
Pitassi has appeared so noncommittal to some of his client entrepreneurs that they've had to ask him outright: "Are you really going to be there when I need you?" He keeps a day-timer but says it "doesn't mean as much to me now as it used to." He deliberately leaves the door to his home office open, and when a child wanders in, he claims he'll drop what he's doing. "When one of the children needs the attention, I will stop, do the focus time, look them in the eyes, and talk with them," he says. "I never used to do that.
"There's no way I'm going to miss out on time with my family," he continues. "I'll lose deals over vacations, whereas before I would have been sitting by the fax machine while my wife did family stuff." He says this sincerely enough, and yet a family vacation is precisely where he chose to conduct the interviews for this article. Earlier he apologized that his schedule was "so busy" and "hectic" over the next few weeks; could we possibly meet in Idaho, where he'd be relaxing with his wife, children, and parents for a few days? It wasn't until we met that the apparent incongruity hit him. "This is worse than I thought it was going to be," he confessed straightaway. "My whole life before was about integrating family and business, because it was all business-related. Now I'm just getting comfortable not integrating, and here I am sitting with you."
Throughout our first interview Pitassi appeared slightly uneasy, as if I were an emissary from the entrepreneurial world who had come to whisk him back. Or maybe he wished that I would. He dressed casually, in shorts, and arrived empty-handed--no pen, no paper, no notebook (electronic or otherwise)--almost as if to demonstrate how free he was of any corporate trappings. We met alone, without his family, and he declined to give me the phone number of where he was staying. Could we wrap it up in one session? he asked right away. If not, then could we meet at 6:30 a.m. the next day? He was leaving town, and when I asked what time he was leaving and where he was going, he couldn't, or wouldn't, say.
