'Technologist' casts about for challenge

Greg Gianforte

Jetlagged after a late-night flight from Sydney, Greg Gianforte is hunched over a cellphone on loudspeaker mode so his entourage of staff and PR consultants can listen in on the call.

It's not the easiest way to conduct an interview with the Herald, but the ebullient multi-millionaire American pulls it off with style.

"I'm a technologist. I have an engineering degree and a master's in computer science," he tells the speakerphone. "And I'm fortunate enough that I'm an effective leader of people. So you combine those two things and you end up with a software entrepreneur."

Gianforte's Nasdaq-listed company, RightNow Technologies, sells customer management solutions to mainly large organisations and has grown from nothing to turning over more than US$100 million ($144 million) in less than eight years.

RightNow has snared some sizeable Australasian customers, including Air New Zealand, Vodafone, Telecom, NZ Post, Government departments and universities.

Gianforte passed through New Zealand after hosting RightNow's inaugural Asia-Pacific user conference in Sydney.

As well as possessing a slick patter, Gianforte comes with all the other trappings of a charismatic technology guru. He has written a how-to book on entrepreneurship, is a regular on the speaking circuit and a ready sound-bite provider for the technology press.

When global security giant McAfee bought his previous business, Brightwork Development, for US$10 million in 1994, the then 33-year-old thought about retirement but decided to start another business instead.

"Much as I love to fly-fish, I didn't want to end up with a tombstone that said, 'He caught a lot of fish'," Gianforte explains.

He says RightNow has increased revenue by about 50 per cent a year over the past three years and, in the Asia-Pacific region, staff numbers have jumped from three employees two years ago to 24, serving 150 clients.

At least part of RightNow's success can be attributed to its embrace of the increasingly popular "on-demand" model of software delivery.

On demand, or "managed hosting", saves companies some of the hassles associated with running installed software packages and is perceived as a growing threat to the traditional corporate sales models used by companies such as Oracle and Microsoft.

Another point of difference for RightNow is that it is headquartered not in Silicon Valley, but in the unlikely setting of Bozeman, Montana.

Why Bozeman? "It was the fly-fishing," says Gianforte, a father of four who in his spare time is a hunting and fishing fanatic.

"If you pick up a magazine on world-class fly-fishing, Bozeman, Montana, and New Zealand will be competing for the most articles."

The Montana environment also fosters good IT staff, he says.

"It helps that it's an agricultural background there. You might have sheep; we have cattle. In that regard when it's time to calve or time to brand and the tractor breaks, you don't form a committee, you don't call a consultant, you just fix the tractor. That sort of work ethic somehow is lost in the larger metropolitan areas."


GREG GIANFORTE

Who: Founder and chief executive, RightNow Technologies.

Favourite gadget: GPS, used for "geocaching" - a worldwide treasure hunt using GPSs (see www.geocaching.com).

Next big thing: Making technology invisible. "It's not until the technology becomes invisible and we can focus on the outcome that we'll really have broad adoption."

Alternative career: "I tried fishing full time, but that didn't work out."

Spare time: Fly-fishing, hunting and "anything outdoors".

Favourite sci-fi movie: "I'm not a big movie-goer. I believe reality is more exciting than fiction."