Startups want to have older people around with old-economy
skills, sound judgment, and an unquestioned commitment to the boss's well-being.
Fifteen months ago, 34-year-old Gregory P. Sullivan enlisted a retired
financial executive in
Lancaster, N.H., to help start an Internet company called Flagship
Communications that
specialized in e-support and telemarketing services.
The older man, a one-time division controller at the James River Corporation
(now the Fort James
Corporation) in Deerfield, Ill., became Mr. Sullivan's first employee
and, overnight, his workplace
confidant. He accepted a board position and even traveled to Portland,
Me., and stayed in his new
boss's guest house while the two worked around the clock on the project.
"When your child comes to you and has a need, you go," said Kevin Sullivan,
58, who is Gregory's
father.
Bill Gates isn't the only Internet entrepreneur to put his dad on the
payroll. (He appointed the elder
Mr. Gates co-chairman of the $21.8 billion Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
last year.) In the
dot-com world, peopled largely by 20-somethings and 30-whatevers, an
increasing number of
chief executives are turning to their fathers and mothers to tap into
the one qualification the whiz kid
lacks by definition: experience.
"It's amazing how common it is," said Bruce Tulgan, president of Rainmaker
Thinking, a New
Haven, Conn., consulting firm. "People come up to me at conferences
all the time and say, 'I'm
working for my child, or my dad is working for me.' "
Experts cite a variety of factors for the trend, starting with the youthfulness
of dotcom chief
executives. One 1998 study by the Wells Fargo Bank of San Francisco
and the National
Federation of Independent Business in Washington, showed that people
under 35 were
responsible for 42 percent of all business start-ups.
Perhaps the biggest motivator is an intangible: the desire to have older
people around with
old-economy skills, sound judgment and an unquestioned commitment to
the boss's well-being.
"Children tend to trust their parents more than they could trust someone
else," says Linda Dash,
52. Her son Darien, 28, founder of DME Interactive Holdings, a New
York company that
provides Internet access and customized content to minority households,
hired her last May as
general manager to oversee operations after it began trading publicly.
"I never in a million years
expected to be doing this," Ms. Dash said. As a self-described "do-everything
person," she said
she became computer-literate on the job. One of only two employees
over 35, she dispenses
motherly advice to co-workers by stressing the importance of education.
"I'm having a ball," she
said.
While parents like Ms. Dash bring enthusiasm and energy to their new
jobs, others have résumés
that would make them a catch almost anywhere.
Martin Kogon, 59, who was hired to run a unit of his son's dot-com
business last year, holds an
M.B.A. from Wharton and owned four businesses the last three and a
half decades, including
National Dynamics, Management Ventures and Central Metals Recycling,
all based in Atlanta.
Since he took over as president of Websiteforfree.com, a division of
Definition 6, a Web
development and design company in Atlanta that his son Michael, 30,
started in his garage in 1997,
Mr. Kogon has helped assemble a board and taken a leading role in contract
negotiations. In early
January he relinquished the title to become director of special projects
for the entire company.
His co-workers affectionately call him "gray matter," a reference to
both his hair color and his
experience, and seek his advice about everything from reading a person's
character to making a
home purchase. The father, though, takes care to rein in his opinions
about the business.
Otherwise, he said, his fellow employees would take his comments to
mean, "Marty said to do it
that way, either because I'm older or have more knowledge or I'm Michael's
dad."
At most, his son Michael says, he might tell a midlevel manager, "If
the vote were mine, this is what
my suggestion would be."
Father and son have an informal strategy for resolving disagreements.
"I say if you're not nice to
me, I'll tell your mother," jokes the elder Mr. Kogon. In response,
he says, Michael usually says:
"Be nice to me, or I'll tell my mother."
For all the jesting, reversing the traditional power relationship in
an office setting can be tricky.
"Misunderstandings arise when roles aren't clearly defined or when
parents are used to telling the
child what to do," said Ross W. Nager, executive director of the Arthur
Anderson Center for
Family Business in Houston.
Other specialists issue even direr warnings. Paul Karofsky, executive
director of Northeastern
University's Center for Family Business in Boston, says he can guarantee
that going into business
together won't strengthen the bonds between parent and child and might
weaken them. "When
there's stress in the business, stress in the family comes to the fore,"
he said.
The elder Mr. Sullivan, the retired executive who helped his son start
Flagship Communications in
Maine last year, found that out. When he switched from reporting to
his son's former partner to
answering directly to his son, he found himself wanting to march in
and issue reprimands. "The most
difficult thing was the role reversal," he said. "In the office, you're
Kevin, not Dad."
The younger Mr. Sullivan said he, too, had his doubts. And so, shortly
after a joint venture in which
Flagship Communications was a partner was spun off last January, Kevin
Sullivan jumped ship and
became a partner at the new company.
But Gregory Sullivan apparently could not get enough paternal advice.
Three weeks before his
father left, he hired his stepfather, Bob Gilbert, 64, to fill the
newly created position of executive
vice president for operations.
"I'm doing it because I love Gregg," said Mr. Gilbert, who has 23 years
of experience in selling and
establishing fulfillment and lead distribution systems. Another reason
for choosing Flagship
Communications over several competing offers, he said, was that it
did not require relocation.
So far, he has no regrets. "I've told the human-resources guy: get
a mix of people in here," he said.
If I'm having this much fun, why shouldn't other people?"
