Entrepreneurs Honored for Their Work Building Companies
By MICHAEL LYSTER
Dirt. Data. Degrees. Dancewear. Professionals for hire.
All were good for honors at the Business Journal’s second annual Excellence in Entrepreneurship Awards lunch last week in Irvine. The yearly event recognizes the business and community contributions of entrepreneurs, recognizing five winners out of a pool of more than 60 nominees.
This year’s winners were:
& #149; David Moore, chairman and chief executive of Corinthian Colleges Inc. in Santa Ana.
Moore was honored for his work taking for-profit college operator Corinthian from an unwanted 16-school division of Irvine-based National Education Corp. to where it is today.
Corinthian counted a recent market value of nearly $2 billion and runs some 70 campuses and continuing education centers. The company’s schools offer degrees and diplomas in healthcare, business, technology and other areas.
“We train and develop human capital,” Moore said last week as he accepted his award.
In the past year, Corinthian’s shares have nearly doubled, making it a standout in otherwise down market. Strong profit and revenue growth, driven by acquisitions and internal expansion, have propelled Corinthian’s shares. The Wall Street Journal recently ranked the company among its “Top Guns” of best performing companies.
Moore said he’s upbeat about Corinthian’s continued growth this year, saying he looks forward to “barbecuing the shorts”,referring to short sellers betting on a fall in the company’s shares.
& #149; Victor Tsao, president, chief executive and cofounder of Linksys Group Inc. of Irvine.
Tsao was awarded for his work with wife Janie building Linksys into the leading seller of networking devices for consumers. The award capped a busy past few weeks for the Tsaos,on March 20, Cisco Systems Inc. said it was buying Linksys for $500 million in stock. The Tsaos plan to keep running Linksys as a separate Cisco unit, marking the first time a Cisco acquisition has kept its own brand name.
Linksys has been something of a fairy tale for the Tsaos. Nearly all of the Linksys’ production is done under contract in Taiwan,the homeland of the Tsaos. The two met while at Taipei’s Tamkang University. Both left comfortable computer systems jobs to start Linksys in 1988.
Victor Tsao accepted the Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award on behalf of the couple, saying his wife couldn’t attend because she was meeting with the Cisco planning team.
& #149; Craig Atkins III, partner, cofounder of O’Donnell/Atkins Co. of Costa Mesa.
Atkins, an East Coast transplant who’s gone native in Orange County’s beach culture, was honored for the growth of his land brokerage from the depths of the early 1990s recession to today’s housing boom. Out of work in 1992, Atkins joined with partner Mackey “Mack” O’Donnell to start O’Donnell/Atkins with no money or deals.
Last year, the brokerage closed $700 million worth of land deals, acting as a go-between and consultant for landowners and homebuilders.
Atkins, an avid surfter, scuba diver and spear fisher, also started My Ocean, a group of businesspeople dedicated to preserving coastal waters.
& #149; Donald B. Murray, chief executive, chairman, cofounder of Resources Connection Inc., Costa Mesa.
Murray left a good job with Deloitte & Touche to launch Resources Connection with two colleagues in 1998. Originally a Deloitte & Touche unit, Resources Connection links companies with accounting and finance professionals on a project basis.
In 1999, Murray and the other founders led a management buyout of the operation from Deloitte. A year later, Resources Connection went public. The company counted a recent market value of nearly $500 million.
Resources Connection now serves more than 1,500 companies, including PepsiCo Inc., Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc. and Southwest Airlines Co.
Murray also is a black belt in tae kwon do with an interest in ancient Asian philosophy.
& #149; Brian Hill and Rhonda Hill-Tolar, cofounders, Discount Dance Supply, Anaheim.
In the past 16 years, siblings Hill and Hill-Tolar turned a $10,000 investment into a business with yearly sales of more than $20 million. Neither went to college and honed their business skills while working in their parent’s Orange retail dance shop.
The two have “realized a dream of making a living selling tights,” Hill said last week. “It takes a real man to sell tights,” he joked.
Discount Dance started selling dancewear through stores before developing a 100-page catalogue. In the past few years, the Internet has become the company’s prime source of business, accounting for half of yearly sales.
Daryl Carter, cofounder and co-chairman of Irvine-based real estate investor Capri Capital LLC, was the award ceremony’s keynote speaker.
He recalled the tough times he and partner Quintin Primo went through early on in building their business. Among them: sharing a bed in the one-bedroom Harlem apartment of Primo’s uncle when the pair couldn’t afford a New York hotel.
