Ideas to Money

Ideas to Money

By Janet Leiser

Senior Editor

As a Silicon Valley lawyer during the technology boom of the 1990s, Brent Britton made a bundle. Now he's betting on the Tampa Bay area.

"It's a really exciting time to be here," says Britton. "There's an awful lot of innovation going on here. And there are a lot of people who come here realizing they can live and work here. They don't have to be in New York. They don't have to be in San Francisco where real estate prices are through the roof.

"People can come here and work and start companies and enjoy life and then go the beach at the end of the day in January."

Britton, an MIT Media Lab graduate who says his practice is all about "turning ideas into money," moved to Tampa from New York City in late 2003. He and his wife, Sharon, a Tampa native, were looking for a wholesome place to raise their young son.

Britton, 39, joined Akerman Senterfitt, Florida's second largest law firm after Holland & Knight LLP, in March of 2004.

"I have a better practice here than I ever had in New York City," says Britton. That's partly due to the technology sector's recent rebound following the dot-com bust of 2000 and 2001.

"People realize technology is not evil," he says. "Technology is inevitable. We deploy the technology and innovations and it makes the world a slightly better place incrementally year after year. Investing in that is a wise and conservative practice because it's going to happen. We're not going back to the horse and buggy. We're going to have more fuel-efficient cars."

Britton still has clients based in New York City and San Francisco, but he says much of his new business is local.

He's not alone in his upbeat assessment of the local technology sector.

Michelle Bauer, a former executive director of the Tampa Bay Technology Forum who's now with Sextant Marketing Group, agrees with him.

"There was a winnowing process after the dot-com bust," Bauer says. "A lot of companies didn't make it. Those that did are just doing phenomenally."

She points to Tribridge Consulting and Vertical IT Solutions as examples of local companies doing well.

Britton sounds like a spokesman for the Florida Chamber of Commerce when he speaks about the area.

"Tampa is a world-class city," he says. "I've lived in a few of them so I think I'm qualified to say that. Professional sports is just amazing here. The physical plant here is just fantastic - the beaches, the palm trees, the sun. For a kid who grew up in the woods of Maine, this is just heaven. And we have really good, decent, hardworking people in all sectors.

"Most of the people I've met are passionate with entrepreneurial spirit, just rearing to go: How do I do it? Where do I sign? How do I get a patent? How do I start a company?"

Missing pieces

As a newcomer, Britton also sees the weak spots. Funding is one of the problems.

In Silicon Valley, prior to the bust, money flowed more freely than e-mail spam. "You couldn't throw a business plan on the ground without coming back in an hour and finding a check stapled to it," he adds.

Investors now are more careful about where they place their money. ""People are looking for cake under the icing," he says.

But it's even more of a problem locally, he says.

"One of the things I think we're missing in Tampa is a strong and viable venture capital investing community," he says. "There are a number of important people who I hear are doing venture investing professionally, and there are a number of angel investors and potential angels. But we don't have a critical mass yet in terms of deal flow.

"We don't have an efficient venture capital market here. It's very much a networked market: It's who you know, who you can get in front of."

The Tampa Bay Technology Forum, of which Britton is a board member, recently started a quarterly dinner where startups present to investors.

"In my view, the whole process is really one of information flow," he says. "If I know someone who knows someone who knows someone, and all these people trust one another, and they can convince 10 people with money to invest to come to a dinner, my job is done. After that the company sells itself."

There are startups receiving funding but not always from local investors. Says Britton: "There are firms who invest all over the Southeast."

Bauer says there is private placement activity locally, but she concedes it's nowhere near the level of San Francisco or Boston.

"I think small- and medium-sized companies are seeing good, steady growth," she says. "There's a lot of dynamism with regards to entrepreneurship. The companies are smaller but they seem to be thriving. TBTF is certainly instrumental in that."

Help needed

Most entrepreneurs starting out need help crafting their business plan and polishing their presentation for investors, Britton says.

"No one can be faulted for not instinctively knowing how to do that well because it's difficult," he says.

There are consultants in the area who coach new CEOS; there just aren't enough, Britton says, adding: "I'd really be gratified to see more people in this community who are willing to work with entrepreneurs, help them craft their business plan, help them craft their message, make their pitch and do it in a way that's both visually and intellectually stimulating to a room full of investors, which is no small trick."

Those consultants typically aren't paid until the entrepreneur receives venture funding.

BRITTON'S BIBLE FOR ENTREPRENEURS

Brett Britton, a former Silicon Valley lawyer whose specialty is emerging companies, offers his five tips for new entrepreneurs:

1 Plan. Plan. Plan. "If you're thinking about starting a company," Britton says, "you need to think about how you're going to feed yourself for the next three years. People write business plans and they think it's the document you use to convince investors to give you money, and it is. But ultimately it's a plan for your business, and you can't plan enough. It has a return on investment equivalent to buying insurance. You need to plan for the worst and hope for the best."

2 Protect intellectual property. "It's all about turning ideas into money," Britton says. "No investor expects you, as an emerging company, to have patents immediately. But they want you to illustrate to them that you're serious about protecting intellectual property and you're at least preparing to figure out how to [do it]. If you don't have any trade secret or patent or proprietary way of competing better, than you don't distinguish yourself from other companies, and that makes you less of an investment-grade opportunity."

3 Treat employees well. "You, as the leader of the company, are going to set the tone for the company's personality," he says. "You can be a nice person to work with or you can be a tyrant. From a purely selfish point of view, I think you get more out of people by being nice to them, polite to them and ethical toward them than by being mean, ugly and difficult. I think it behooves entrepreneurs to be ethical and decent because you can get a lot of work out of someone by treating them harshly, but the minute they have another opportunity, they're gone. And promoting loyalty is difficult in any environment these days; employees change jobs like they change clothes. You want to be the person who gives credit where it's due and criticism where it's due. I've worked with people who rule by tyranny and I can tell you the minute they're up against the wall, the minute the SEC wants to come and investigate their business practices, people come crawling out of the woodwork to testify against them. You really do get back what you give."

4 Ethics count. "The law is an outer bound on your behavior. Government sets the rules in place that say you can do anything you want until you hit this line. Run your company in a way that's impenetrable to scrutiny. In keeping your books or your corporate records, you can do it well or do it so-so and still be within the bounds of the law. But when the regulators come calling and say they think something is wrong, you want to be able to open your books and say, 'What do you need? Where do you want to look? It's all here in black and white.' The laws in this country encourage innovation. You have this really broad, level playing field with lots of freedom, lots of liberty - enjoy that, leverage that, exploit that to its full capacity, but don't cross the line."

5 Be passionate. "If you're getting out of bed in the morning and you're not loving it, do something else. You may feel that starting a company is right for you until you get into it and a year later you might realize, 'Wow, this is a lot of work because not only am I moving and shaking and meeting with investors, but I'm hiring people, firing people, buying photocopiers. I'm the guy who mops up at night because we can't afford a janitor.' "