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Tech firms should add Rumsfeld to Rolodex
By KRIS HUNDLEY, Times Staff Writer
TAMPA -- Jim Opfer brought encouraging news to Tampa Bay area tech entrepreneurs on Thursday: Technology spending may have dried up in the commercial sector, but the U.S. government is open for business. As the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense fight terrorism at home and abroad, they need the latest, greatest technology, and they're willing to pay. "We had 10 years of the government not doing a lot of modernization," Opfer said of the 1990s, when corporate spending fueled technological advances. "But there was a big pendulum swing after 9/11 and a lot of money is flowing to the DoD. Out of chaos, things happen." Opfer, who addressed a seminar here sponsored by the Tampa Bay Technology Forum, is one of the people who is making things happen. The former Air Force colonel founded LaunchPower Inc., a Palo Alto, Calif., company that, for a fee, acts as a matchmaker between promising tech companies and the government. Opfer spent 21 years in the military building telecom networks for the Department of Defense and retired in 1992. Part of his career was spent in the Reagan White House, updating the president's telecommunications systems. Looking for leading-edge technology for the White House, whatever the cost, Opfer headed to Silicon Valley. There he met with people such as Apple's Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison, who was involved in a consulting project for the CIA. With a budget of $200-million a year, Opfer handed out contracts and built an enviable Rolodex of tech and government contacts. When he left the Air Force, Opfer thought he'd never again work with the Defense Department. "Then Osama bin Laden turned ... airplanes into smart weapons very cost-effectively," he said. "The world woke up." Now Opfer, who ran several private start-ups in the 1990s, is back tapping his government contacts and advising tech hopefuls on how to land military contracts. Noting that the Defense Department's budget for fiscal 2004 is 10 times bigger than that of the new Homeland Security Department's, Opfer suggested that companies should pound on the door of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld rather than on that of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Niches being targeted by the government, he said, were energy technologies for individual soldiers, content management software, peer-to-peer computing and robotic and autonomous vehicles. He told the nearly 100 local executives attending Thursday's session that government contractors must have a sustainable business and not rely solely on military contracts. "I've seen companies come to me after they've burned through millions, saying they need a government contract to be saved," Opfer said. "I say "Forget it, close it down.' You've got to show the government that you'll be around in the long run." Other characteristics Opfer said were essential for wanna-be contractors: Be willing to listen and adapt to government needs. Deliver on schedule. Be trustworthy. "It's a relationship-based business," he said. "A good referral is worth much more than all the marketing collateral or PowerPoint presentations." Marvin Scaff, a part-time Tampa resident associated with California venture fund SVIC, asked Opfer to get involved when one of the fund's portfolio companies was shut out of a Federal Aviation Administration contract. Though the frustrated company wanted to send its chief executive cross-country to make a pitch, Opfer had better advice: Keep the CEO at home and get your best techies to Washington. With a single phone call, Opfer arranged a meeting with the FAA's decisionmaker, a woman he had known 15 years earlier in the military. Four days later, SVIC's portfolio company won the multimillion-dollar, multiyear contract. "The FAA tested the technology and selected it based on its merits," Scaff said, adding that without Opfer's intervention such a test never would have taken place. "Jim has lots of old buddies from the Defense Department. He can get on an airplane to Washington and get a meeting with anybody." -- Kris Hundley can be reached at hundley@sptimes.com or (727)892-2996.
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From the Times Business report
From the AP
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