Q&A: Thomas Duening, new director of UCCS Center for Entrepreneurship

Thomas Duening has tasted both success and failure as a technology entrepreneur, starting one company that ended up in bankruptcy and wiped out his savings and another that was acquired by a larger competitor and landed him a potential major payday.

He will try to bring what he learned from those experiences to local entrepreneurs and students at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, where he arrived last month as director of its Center for Entrepreneurship, the El Pomar Chair in Business and Entrepreneurship and an associate professor of management. He and the two other El Pomar chairs work through the El Pomar Institute for Innovation and Commercialization at UCCS to play a role in the early development of new ideas and products.

Duening, 52, spent the previous five years as director of the Entrepreneurial Programs Office at Arizona State University’s Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering, where he taught courses in technology entrepreneurship and launched the Arizona Technology Investor Forum. Previously, he was director of the University of Houston’s Entrepreneur and Venture Development Center and assistant dean for administration and executive programs at the university’s business school.

He is the author of a dozen books on business and entrepreneurship, including “Technology Entrepreneurship: Creating, Protecting and Capturing Value,” which will be released this week. While doing research for that book, he founded Insyte InfoLabs India Pvt. Ltd., an outsourcing company in Banglore, India, that was acquired by AnsrSource Inc. in 2007.

Question: How would you describe your business career?

Answer: I’ve been bankrupt and I’ve been successful. I started my first company while I was in grad school — I was 25 and didn’t know much. But I had a wife and kid and needed money to support them, so I met an older man who was going to provide information to the electric utility industry on the human health effects of electromagnetic fields. We started a newsletter using his name and for the first two years wondered why we were doing this because we making just enough money to survive. It really grew in the last four years.

After I finished my doctoral degree, I was recruited to be the assistant dean at the University of Houston Business School and the dean, who was one of the top scholars on leadership, taught me how to write books. He eventually left, and I quit to start an E-learning company called HighTechCampus.com in January 2000 to provide training program for companies. My timing couldn’t have been worse — six months later, the stock market crashed. We did it for two years before it became impossible to continue and sold it to a venture capital firm in Dallas that took it through bankruptcy. I was in my mid-40s with kids in college and had invested everything I had in the company.

I started a consulting company after that to write more books with the former dean and one of our books, “Managing Einsteins: Leading High-Tech Workers in the Digital Age,” made it to number 100 on Amazon.com’s best-seller list. After that, I began studying outsourcing and got a contract from Wiley (John Wiley & Sons Inc.) to write two books based on our research. While doing that research, I met a guy from India through the Internet and started an outsourcing business called InfoLabs to do editorial services in India for textbook companies. AnsrSource bought us out, but we retain an equity interest. One of the reasons I am here today is I have had great people come into my life that have taught me a lot.

Q: What was the highlight of your work at Arizona State?

A: After two years in Arizona, I decided the state didn’t raise capital well, so I organized the Arizona Technology Investor Forum that became the biggest angel investor group in Arizona. We had $2.5 million invested in 11 deals before I left. We started the forum by gathering high-net-worth individuals and now we have 50 who pay $2,000 a year to be part of it. We do the due diligence for the investors so the deals are investment-ready when they are presented.

Q: What attracted you to UCCS?

A: They came calling and I have some ideas on how economies work and how people can rally around the university to create value. So before I got much older, I decided I might not get too many more chances to try out those ideas.

Q: What is keeping Colorado Springs from becoming more of a center for technology entrepreneurs?

A: The community certainly needs more capital flow, not just in the amount of money, but also the velocity at which it is turned over back into the community. That happens when you have a generation of innovators that is too old to innovate, but has the money to invest in the next generation of innovators. You need good deals, good people and good companies to be successful.

There are enough residents with wealth here that you could find $3 million and really get things going here. We need serious ventures that will attract serious capital that needs deals that will return multiples of their investment.

Q: What role do you plan to play?

A: I know how to evaluate investor-grade businesses — either they are worthy of investment or you know how to walk away from those that are no good. I know what works from my research and I know how to create economic development in a community.

Q: What qualities do you find in most successful entrepreneurs?

A: Some people are really good at starting, funding, capitalizing or running companies, but they all are successful just by the sheer will of living through the bad times. Most good entrepreneurs didn’t get into starting their own business to become wealthy, they were sick of working for somebody else and wanted the freedom that comes with working for yourself. One of the misconceptions about entrepreneurs is they are risk-takers. Research shows they have no more propensity for risk than the general population, but they have learned how to minimize risk. I also love the way entrepreneurs see every calamity as an opportunity. They also know that you cannot be successful over the long term without creating value for somebody else. The purpose of the company is not to make money, but to create value and find customers.
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Questions and answers are edited for space and clarity.