The Capitalist Seducer

"My management style is seduction - I seduce employees into falling in love with their jobs"  Dennis Morin

Dennis Morin's taste in art runs from the outrageous, the grotesque, and the objectionable.  It could also describe the way he runs a business.  

Dennis Morin is a damn fool.

Foolish enough to have found one of history's greatest entrepreneurial success stories, and conceive its flagship product, InTouch, which connected operators who monitor and control factory processes.

"InTouch was a product that really didn't do much - but customers loved it!"

Imagine such a product, an idea, a solution that indeed doesn't really do much, but customers spend millions, it’s the number one product in its market, to become part of the user community.   It was a Walkman, an IPod, and the next big thing before anyone knew what hit them.

The company is Wonderware, founded on April Fool’s Day, 1987.  By the time it began operations in 1989, it was clear that they were going to intimidate competitors, charm customers, and not quite enter new markets as much as drive straight through them.   At breakneck speed.

The founding Wonderware team shared an origin with another Orange County, California company, Triconex.  In February 1986, Triconex was still a struggling startup that re-organized and focused its remaining resources on hardware development.   Several members of the software development staff left during the re-organization, including Dennis Morin. Within two years, much of the core Triconex software development team left to follow Dennis to Wonderware.   Included were Phil Huber, Cole Chevalier, Bill Urone and Jerry Cuckler.

The automation industry was conservative, resistant to change, and did not generally buy new technology from startup companies.  Items like safety systems or in Wonderware's case, a graphical set of Windows based tools to build operator displays called Human Machine Interfaces (HMIs) were largely developed in house or bought from large, established vendors like Honeywell or  Rockwell Automation.

Wonderware was different.  Rebellious, fresh ideas, creative, outlandish, and California cool.   By 1991, both Triconex and Wonderware were mentioned in Business Week, a national publication, as two of the 250 fastest growing small companies in America.  The small part did not last.   In 1994, a survey of investment analysts rated Wonderware ahead of Cisco Systems for growth potential and returns.

In an era from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the dawn of the dot.com economy, Triconex and Wonderware defied gravity, expectations, and competitors to rule their respective markets.

By the end of 1995 however, the party was over, it was time to serve the wine.   Millions were gained and lost.  Some who followed the vision became rich, others who came in early and contributed greatly did not.  

What happened in 1995?  We shall see.