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KAUAI Radio AM 720, (Kauai, Hawaii),
If you're ever in Kalaheo and see a man on a tree swing outside the old McBryde Sugar Co. manager's house, tread lightly. It could be Ned Dana and chances are he's working. The co-founder and president of Rare & Dear Inc., a company that customizes database software for mid- to large-size companies statewide, set up his business in the house in July 1995. Though Dana relocated his offices to the nearby Kauai Coffee Co. building last December, the old plantation manager's house is now his home and his refuge of choice for shaking mental blocks. Five of Dana's 13 employees are his neighbors, living next door in plantation cottages. For these programmers and engineers, almost all of whom have worked in the high-tech beehive of Silicon Valley, Kauai is quite a change of pace. "The people we started with here had a lot of experience in computers and electronics, about 20 years each, from companies like Tandem and IBM," Dana says. So far, the synergy of country living and high-tech working has paid off: Rare & Dear is the most successful software developer ever on Kauai. Last year, the company generated $578,000 in revenues, and in the first quarter of 1997 alone it generated another $400,000. The company is growing so quickly that before the end of the year, Dana plans to open an eight-person downtown Honolulu office. Bringing high-tech to agrarian Kauai involved the vision of two men: Dana, who has 20 years experience in the computer industry, and Rare & Dear CEO Craig Millett, a 12-year counselor to families and businesses who has no computer industry experience. Says Dana: "Craig's not a technical person at all, and he stays removed from the business on a day-to-day basis. He provides a perspective from the outside, which is really useful because sometimes we can get carried away with the marvels of technology." The two met while attending a personal growth and development seminar in California in 1985. Millett eventually chose the firm's warm-and-fuzzy name. "Craig was determined that this wasn't going to be just another high-tech firm," says Dana. "So the name grew out of an acknowledgment of our staff, what great people they are." Sounds good in theory, but it's taken a bit of explaining out in the field. "The first thing people say is, "What do you do, sell antiques or something? But people certainly remember it," Dana says. Dana, 44, entered the computer industry in 1973 as a math aide at a biomedical research company in Palo Alto, California. In 1981 he was one of the first employees hired at Oracle Corp., now the world's largest vendor of database management systems and software. "I just sort of stumbled into the company not knowing what it would become," he says. He worked as part of the senior technical staff, developing early versions of Oracle's core database and application products. But instead of riding that wave, he left in 1986, when he says the birth of his first son made him acutely aware of the need to balance career and family life. "By then, Oracle had grown to 500 people and I just felt it was too big," he says. "I used to know everyone in the company, but all of a sudden it had became too impersonal. I had been looking at Kauai with some friends because we were tired of the rat race and wanted to find a better place to live." After doing consulting work for two years, Dana finally made the move to the Garden Island. In 1989, using proceeds from the sale of Oracle stock, he purchased Run Computer Run, a local computer repair and consulting company, for $20,000. "It was a business in someone's garage that did PC tutoring and installed software," says Dana. "I tried to make it more professional, so it was at least open during business hours. Before you'd come to the shop and it would be closed while the owner was out surfing or hiking." Dana moved the company to Kukui Grove Center, then to a larger office on Kuhio Highway in Lihue. Dana wasn't the only entrepreneur to have his plans rearranged by Hurricane Iniki in 1992. "I realized we were too dependent on the economy on Kauai, and I wasn't terribly satisfied with the work, so I decided to consider doing Oracle work again," he says. He gradually turned over the day-to-day operations of the business to one of his associates and began taking classes to qualify as an independent representative of Oracle products. In 1994 he started a business as an authorized Oracle reseller in Kalaheo under the name Run Computer Run ORA. In 1996 he finally closed the Lihue shop, convinced that his future lay in realigning himself with the company he had left 11 years ago. With four full-time employees he generated $25,000 in revenues in his first year and $133,000 in 1995. Starting with Hawaiian Cement, Dana lined up accounts like Coca-Cola, BHP, Roberts Hawaii and the Research Corporation of the University of Hawaii. The company was incorporated as Rare & Dear in 1996. Since that time, the bulk of its revenues have come from two contracts to create customized databases for the Pacific Missile Range Facility. The first such contract was to automate various administrative and tracking processes for the range's communications division. "The system tracks costs of projects, timing on projects, and inventory," says Dana. "They needed to be able to manage the data so that, for example, if any changes were made on a schematic diagram, all the copies in the different departments would get corrected and the right documents would get to the right people." The second PMRF contract was for the automation of its accounting procedures. "It gives them a better idea of how to put together the overhead costs for the base and more accurately bill customers for the use of their facilities," says Dana. Though Dana moved to the Garden Isle to be free from a Silicon Valley lifestyle, his company is not unlike its fast-moving counterparts on the mainland. "Our nominal business hours start at 8 in the morning, and someone will usually be in the office until 7 p.m. or as late as 9 p.m.," Dana says. "Employees who are part of the core put in about 60-hour weeks." One disadvantage of being on Kauai, he says, is not having access to industry peers on a regular basis. "It's hard to keep up with technology anywhere, but it's a little harder here because there's not a lot of trade shows or things like that coming through town. Fortunately, there's a lot of information on-line, and we attend mainland conferences sometimes, so it's not like we're isolated." Besides its name and its unlikely location, the company differs from other high-tech firms in its management practices: ranging from encouraging breaks on the tree swing to shake off mental blocks to offering a weekly massage and holding an annual croquet tournament attended by clients and friends in the large yard fronting the house. While some might think a laid-back lifestyle is a liability for a high-tech firm, Dana says the slower pace is good for the work Rare & Dear does. "Software development takes a lot of slowing down, thinking carefully and reflecting on what you really need to do at all levels, whether you're looking at improving an entire company or solving one little problem," he says. "So it's my feeling that this kind of environment enables us to produce better results than if we were part of the buzz in Los Angeles or San Francisco, where people get sucked up into the marvels of technology. Kauai offers a counter-balance to that fast pace. It keeps us human." |
