It was only slightly colder in Vermont than in Boston. A small group of us had just flown in to Rutland, then taken a minivan to The Equinox, an historic resort in the picturesque town of Manchester Village. The group included well-known Boston area entrepreneur and Sycamore Networks co-founder Desh Deshpande; Jerry Fishman, CEO of Analog Devices; Patrick Cloney, executive director of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing & Economic Development; Ron Nordin, a former senior partner at Atlas Venture; and me.
The five of us had flown in to attend the New England Founding Entrepreneurs Summit on Technology, an event put on by Waltham’s Atlas Venture. Atlas held the event last week to bring together about 20 company founders, hopeful entrepreneurs, some of its partners, and a few others…and hopefully to serve up some inspiration as it focused on the pivotal issue of innovation in New England and how to build great, billion-dollar companies here. (Note: Xconomy pays its own freight on such trips, and we make no deals about what we will write, or even whether we will write. For more on our ethics policy, go here.) The Equinox is known for “country pursuits” like archery and falconry. I couldn’t restrain myself from mentioning the falconry symbology to an Atlas partner—you know, as a metaphor for how a VC might deal with entrepreneurs, letting them soar but keeping overall control. “That wasn’t lost on us,” he said (or words to that effect—I thought it would be too obnoxious to have my notebook out the whole time). “Neither was the fact that they have to come back for food.”
All fun-poking aside, we were there for a more serious purpose: to ponder the big question of growing great companies in New England. To that end, I conducted a pre-dinner chat with Analog’s Fishman at the nearby American Museum of Fly Fishing. Analog is a $2.5 billion company. It has stayed put in New England for 40 years, even as the semiconductor industry headed west (to California)—and farther west (to Asia). Fishman has been at the company since 1971; he and Ray Stata are the only two CEOs Analog has ever had.
The chat was conducted off the record, but with Fishman’s permission I’ll try to hit the high points. For starters, he cited consistency of purpose, including cultivating leadership that really understands the corporate culture, as key to Analog’s long-standing success. He also spoke passionately about the need to encourage rule-breaking, to recruit young talent with ties to New England (he rarely looks west of the Mississippi to fill positions in Massachusetts, because they leave for better climates!), and to reward talent in a variety of ways, not just monetarily.
Fishman also talked about Analog’s “chapel,” a sound-proof room complete with stained-glass windows that was built between the offices of Fishman and Stata, who’s still chairman. The two have had some big disagreements over the years, but they vowed to hash them out behind closed (and sound-proofed) doors and to emerge from the chapel with only one voice. If the top leadership of a company is not publicly in agreement, Fishman said, it invites divisiveness among employees.
After our chat, the group moved down the street to the Reluctant Panther restaurant, where Deshpande led a stimulating dinner-time discussion (I’m not sure he ever got his meal). Desh early on made the point that New England is rich in talent, money, infrastructure, and great universities and technological expertise—and so it really has all the ingredients to create great companies. As he later explained, “My agenda was to make the entrepreneurs realize that there are a lot of big problems to be solved in the world and we are well placed to solve them.”
Deshpande started off asking how many entrepreneurs were present: most of us raised a hand. His next question was, “What is stopping you from building great companies?” (Did I see entrepreneurial eyes turn toward the VCs in the room, or were they looking at Patrick Cloney, the state government representative?) That got the conversation
