A Tale of Two Entrepreneurs

Walking the
floor of a trade show exhibit hall is a marketer’s dream. 

For
starters, there is the assessment of each company’s brand and positioning,
based on their booth, signage and staff presentation.  Then, you get to dive into specific corporate
and product messaging through dialogue with the sales representatives and engineers
working the booth.  Is what they say
consistent with the brand strategy?

The
government information technology conference FOSE (http://www.fose.com) held this past week in Washington, DC
is one of my favorites.  Its broad scope
opens the door to all types of exhibitors, from open source software firms and
security providers to hawkers of developer tools and network infrastructure
products.

I set aside
about four hours to scan the more than 200 vendors exhibiting at FOSE this
year.  My expectation was I’d come away
with content for a blog post about the innovative technologies being shopped by
government buyers.  Yet, what stuck with
me this year was two dramatically different entrepreneurial stories which I suspect
will one day share a common positive outcome.

Concept
Solutions’ (http://www.concept-solutions.com/)
Phong Mai has the Silicon Valley techie vibe
down pat.  He is energetic and intense,
and committed to the belief that his views represent where the market is
headed.

Unlike most
west coast-based entrepreneurs, Mai didn’t take a dime of venture capital to
bring Turbo Enterprise (http://www.turbo-enterprise.com/turbo/te_public.p_turbo_enterprise)
to market.  Rather, he bank rolled
development from the consulting fees his firm rang up building Web 2.0
applications for government agencies.

Mai is now
shifting much of his time to a product focus with a solution that helps
developers create Internet applications using AJAX (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming))
.  His company has already stood up CRM
and task management applications using Turbo Enterprise and from speaking with
Mai you get the sense this is just the beginning to an exciting story.

If you Mai
as being in the third inning of his entrepreneurial venture, then Alan Dabbiere
should be in the club house doused in champagne celebrating a
championship.  The founder of supply
chain powerhouse Manhattan Associates (http://www.manh.com/),
Dabbiere owned a majority of the company when he took it public more than 10
years ago.

However,
rather than investing his time on corporate boards and perfecting his short
game, Dabbiere was there in the Airwatch (http://www.air-watch.com/)
booth shaking hands with prospects and espousing the value of the company’s
software.

Airwatch
certainly plays in a hot market.  The
company has developed an enterprise application that monitors, manages and
maintains wireless networks and devices, while supporting the activities of
mobile workers – all from a single console. 
They’ve gained sales traction in a number of vertical markets and are
now turning their attention to the government space.

“You really
must think this company has something special,” I asked.  This is going to be huge, Dabbiere responded
with the same confidence projected by Concept Solutions’ Mai.

Two
entrepreneurs at FOSE who are at different points in their careers.  Yet, their stories are the same.

Marc Hausman is president and CEO of Strategic Communications Group, a public relations and social media consultancy based in Silver Spring, Maryland.