MTC chairman shares secrets of success

The Southeast Entrepreneurship and Economic Development Symposium (SEEDS) took place Nov. 30 at Drury Plaza Hotel Conference Center in Cape Girardeau.

Among the presentations was a fireside chat between host James Stapleton, chief executive officer of the local technology incubator Codefi, and Dan Cobb, chairman of Missouri Technology Corp. (MTC)

Cobb was appointed to head the MTC on Nov. 9.

Path to success

Cobb detailed four pillars for success in business ventures: having natural talent, the willingness to take risks, getting lucky and the willingness to work extremely hard.

"You have to be willing to work hard and do whatever it takes to succeed," he said, adding people would need to sacrifice personal and family time for work. "... When you're running a growing business, sometimes things can't wait. You either address them or you fall behind."

Getting ahead

While studying at college, Cobb got the opportunity to help start a business, which was not the status quo at the time. Students often moved away to work for existing corporations after graduation.

Along with other students, professors and graduates at Missouri State University, Cobb helped launch the medical information company Management Software in 1983. The McKesson Company purchased that in 1996.

Cobb then in 1999 co-founded HealthMEDX, a long-term health care software, with some of the same people he had worked with before.

That business took more than three years to make a profit, which Cobb said startups cannot afford to have happen nowadays.

During his business career, he also dealt with some customers who did not see eye-to-eye with his team.

"It really almost brought the company down because we really couldn't focus on what we wanted to do strategically," Cobb said. "We had to commit all our resources to their punch list of everything they wanted."

Some customers, he added, just aren't worth having.

Cobb retired in 2012, even though he said he could have still worked for many years.

"I don't regret that, because ... I really didn't enjoy the work that I was doing," he said. He added he'd been trading time for money and wanted to spend more time with his family.

Innovators

MTC is an independent group that gets allocation from the State of Missouri to advance innovation and entrepreneurship within the state. It supports existing projects and invests in startup companies, having invested nearly $50 million across some 150 companies in the last decade.

Some of these, Cobb said, have flamed out, while others have been very successful. These companies range in purpose from the agriculture industry to defense work to information technology.

Stapleton announced that MTC had brought on Chris Dittmer, an IBM executive from Cape Girardeau, to be part of its board of directors. Dittmer is the first person from Southeast Missouri appointed to the board.

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