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At that time, he was working as a technology consultant with KPMG. But he really wanted to become a big fish in a big pond. That meant going to the U.S. to mix it up in the country's dazzling high-tech industry. To make that happen, Owen applied to business schools in the U.S. and, with a loan from his father and a British bank, he ended up attending Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management. He felt as though he were in a race to get into action. "Your sense of time becomes incredibly acute," says Owen of the experience. Today, Owen is applying the same sense of purpose to his new job as the 35-year-old CEO of AvantGo. A three-year-old private company based in San Mateo, Calif., AvantGo has created a wireless portal that lets consumers and businesses exchange information and interact with software applications from a host of wireless devices like the Palm handheld. Research firm IDC estimates the market for wireless applications will grow from $7 million in 1999 to $400 million by 2004. SMART MOVES. Owen was recruited for the job by Jeff Christian, the CEO of executive-search firm Christian & Timbers. Christian thought Owen, who had gained seven years of experience working for Dell Computer after leaving grad school, would be a perfect fit. "[Richard] is one of those running backs that wasn't a first-round draft [choice but] that will end up in the Hall of Fame," says Christian. Since starting as AvantGo's CEO in January of this year, Owen has made some simple but smart moves: He has built his own senior management team. And on June 21, he led AvantGo's acquisition of GlobalWare Computing, a Chicago-based software company that enables AvantGo's business customers to extend their Lotus Notes software using mobile devices. This move will give corporations, many of which use Lotus software, a big incentive to sign up for the service. And Owen is trying to lead the company into the public markets. On June 9, AvantGo filed a prospectus with the Securities & Exchange Commission to go public. That would give it more breathing room and capital to reach the black. Based on its S-1 filing, AvantGo looks like a business with real promise. For the first six months of the year, AvantGo reported $5.1 million in revenue, up from $2.9 million in all of 1999. From its inception in June, 1997, through June 30, 2000, AvantGo has racked up an accumulated deficit of $30.5 million. It makes money from licensing its software to businesses, charging service fees for helping them use the software, and charging for ads and content slots on its wireless portal. HARD TIMES. On the consumer side, AvantGo has registered over 700,000 users for its Mobile-Internet service. This service currently offers content from more than 400 Web sites optimized for mobile devices -- providers such as CNET Networks, Mercury Center, and The New York Times. But it's the business side of AvantGo that gets investors salivating. By using its AvantGo Enterprise software, corporations are able to check inventory, place orders, and retrieve valuable customer data -- all from the field, using a mobile device. "We really think of this as the second coming of the Internet," says Rob Meinhardt, AvantGo's vice-president for marketing. So far, AvantGo has signed up a handful of corporate customers, including American Express, Ford Motor, and McKessonHBOC. Owen is a self-made man. He grew up in a working-class suburb of Liverpool called St. Helens. Both his parents taught public school. The area was economically depressed, with 30% joblessness and youth unemployment running as high as 80%. Even after he earned his MBA from MIT, it was still no cakewalk for him. The summer of 1992 wasn't exactly the best of times to be graduating from business school. U.S. unemployment was high, and the economy was still coming out of a recession. But Owen's persistence eventually paid off. After striking out on a networking trip to Silicon Valley, Owen landed a job with a small but fast-growing computer manufacturer in the Lone Star state, Dell Computer. Owen, a problem-solver extraordinaire, rose quickly through Dell's ranks. He helped set up an overseas operation in Europe before being picked to solve Dell's inventory problems, which had landed the company in a cash crisis. He accomplished that by cutting inventory in half in one year -- from a supply of 80 days to just 40. Then, Michael Dell asked him to look into the company's Japanese manufacturing plants. Owen shut down the factory in Japan and built a more efficient one in Malaysia. Fresh from that coup, Dell dispatched Owen in the summer of 1998 to run the company's Net business. The Dell Web site was already up and running, but Owen took it up another few levels. He drove more businesses to use the site, relaunched the consumer area, and introduced more online customer-service features, like a question-and-answer service from Ask Jeeves. The result: Online sales increased from $10 million a day to $40 million a day in one year. "I knew the Dell story back to front," recalls Owens. "But it was getting stale for me." MILES TO GO. That's when Christian came calling. He and others are hoping that Owen's online experience and feel for the needs of business customers will help AvantGo survive the wireless Web wars. Certainly, AvantGo's head start puts it in a good position to become one of the industry's leading software providers. "We're exploiting the intersection of mobile, wireless, and the Net," says Owen. But AvantGo still has to prove a lot before declaring victory. The company must maintain its relationships with content providers, outrun other hungry competitors, and sign up a lot more customers to reach profitability. "It seems like a pretty solid company," says IDC wireless-research analyst Charul Vyas. "They've got a good base to build from." If Owen can keep driving the company forward, he'll have a good shot at adding his biggest achievement yet to an already impressive track record. Ante covers the tech industry for Business Week from New York |
