Dennis Morin bends over the stairway railing at his funky Laguna Beach home with arms outstretched like he’s going to fly. With a goofy look across his face, he asks, “How’s this?” as he strikes a faux pose for a photograph.
While Morin’s clearly comfortable in the life he’s built with money from Wonderware Inc.,the Irvine-based industrial productivity software company he founded,he’s uncomfortable with any attention to his return to the software industry.
After a six-year hiatus, Morin this month became chief executive of Irvine-based IndX Software Corp. At least one industry magazine caught wind of Morin’s move and published a two-word headline: “He’s back.”
Morin’s no more at ease with the half-hour photo session and he slouches in an overstuffed off-white couch, a Pacific Ocean view smothered against the panoramic windows behind him.
“How many more photos do you need?” he asks and slyly drops the hint that some friends are due in a few minutes to have wine and cheese. After that, he plans to go out on the town, he says.
He’s just playing,something he’s been doing since the day he handed Wonderware over to former Siemens AG executive Roy Slavin in 1995, a day he remembers clearly.
“It was an extremely ambivalent day. I wanted to leave. I wanted to stay. But after nine years of busting my hump I really wanted a break,” Morin said.
But to say he’s playing isn’t to suggest he’s doing so by any normal standard,partly because divorce & #233; Morin seems to have achieved a perfect balance between work and play. The day after he left Wonderware, now part of Britain’s Invensys PLC, Morin began to pay full-time attention to the construction of his $5 million home,a Laguna Beach landmark called the Rock House.
As implacable as its owner, the Rock House has a colorful history all its own. Morin read about the lot,on a cliff above the mouth of Aliso Creek,and a developer who planned to build a house into the rock. Morin visited the property, loved the idea and closed a deal to purchase it within a day. Morin scrapped the developer’s plans and started to build the house to his own specifications.
“I took the concept of the Rock House to the extreme,” Morin said. “It looks different than most houses. It’s all curvy and organic. It’s like a piece of sculpture.”
Relieved of his duties running Wonderware, Morin dove into the details of his house, choosing features as small as faucet heads and as large as a home theater system. Hoping to design a home that blurred the line between outside and inside, Morin threw in a wall of retractable windows that, when opened, turn the living room into a porch.
The inside sports stone steps leading from the door down into the living room and also to a downstairs game room, cocktail lounge and entertainment center. The kitchen,strewn with cookbooks,is next to the living room.
In building the house, Morin took some flak from activists concerned about preserving native plant habitat. Protests have since subsided.
“Now tourists come to see it,” boasts Morin.
If the house reeks of Morin’s playful aura, it also says something of his love of the trip more than the destination. Morin appreciates the connection between Wonderware, IndX Software and the construction of his house.
“It’s like cooking,” said Morin, who spent some time at the Cordon Bleu cooking school in England after he left Wonderware. “You spend hours preparing and then, after 15 minutes, it’s in the sink.”
But that’s not to say he doesn’t like playing for the sake of it. Morin bought a boat and spent months sailing off the East Coast. Before he completed his house, Morin racked up frequent flier miles visiting his boat in Charleston, S.C. From there he would sail into the Atlantic,sometimes in stormy weather.
“If you weren’t familiar with the boat’s seaworthiness, you might think it’s a life-threatening situation,” he said. “Twelve-foot waves crashing over the bow and green from all the water crashing into the window looks pretty dramatic.”
Morin said he plans to reunite with his boat later this year, after a transport carries it through the Panama Canal and drops it off in Vancouver, B.C. He and a crew of friends will then sail it to Southern California.
During one of his stints in California minding the construction of his house, a friend invited him to a meeting of the Tech Coast Angels, a group of independent Southern California investors. At the meeting, a charismatic 20-something presented plans for a Web site that referred brides-to-be to services that would help them plan a wedding.
Enthralled with the presenter, Donnie Kerestic, now chief executive of Anaheim Hills-based 1-800-Wedding, Dennis plunked down some cash.
“I hadn’t intended on doing anything, but he’s a natural entrepreneur,” Morin said. “I invested a little bit of money and that got me back into stuff.”
With an easy-going attitude, Morin helped Kerestic develop 1-800-Wedding to be one of the few surviving Internet companies.
“He’s calm. Probably because he’s so confident,” Kerestic said of Morin. “I remember I was nervous and somebody pointed Dennis out and said, ‘He used to be the CEO of Wonderware.’ At first I thought he meant a lingerie company. I’m glad I didn’t say, ‘Oh, so you’re with the bra company.’ ”
Haphazardly more than intentionally, Morin got back into OC business, helping startups that had enthusiastic go-getters in the driver’s seats. In 1998, he invested in IndX software, which, like Wonderware, helps companies manage complex processes more easily. The new company, founded by former Wonderware executive Michael Gonzalez, needed a strong salesman with a software nose. Morin fit the bill.
“Dennis is one of the best marketing minds I’ve come across,” said fellow Tech Coast Angel and IndX board member John Kensey. “He brings that essential ingredient.”
A few weeks ago, Morin took over the top spot of IndX as the founder stepped down to head the business development division. Like his time spent preparing food or building his house, IndX is at a stage Morin relishes,the startup phase reminiscent of Wonderware in its early days.
“When you’re a board member, you come in once a month to pontificate. You get the sugar-coated version. Not when you’re CEO,” Morin said. “When you’re CEO, you get into the gritty parts.”
In a few years, IndX may go public and outgrow him, Morin says, citing what happened at Wonderware. As his old company grew, it changed from the formative stages that demanded a lot of creativity to a more mature level, which required the temperament of a large-company executive.
“When a company goes public, it becomes an entirely different animal. As a CEO, you never do anything for more than five to 10 minutes. You know, such and such a person is filing a claim because they have carpal tunnel syndrome. This person thinks this person was harassed. By the end of the day, the morning feels like yesterday,” Morin said. “It’s all chicken shit.”
IndX could be different. With all of his lieutenants hailing from Wonderware, Morin acknowledges he could be in for the long haul.
“This was the right kind of business. I had money to invest in it. My decision to come here was a confluence of factors,” Morin says.
IndX also could be different because Morin plans to play as hard as he works this time around. He wants to learn how to fly the glider plane he just bought and to sail his boat as soon as it arrives.
“They say the difference between men and boys is the size of their toys,” jokes Morin, looking off his deck to the Pacific with a pair of wraparound sunglasses. “I just want to enjoy life.” n
