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The power of networking
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October 26, 2000: 9:54 a.m. ET
Austin, Texas grandmother forges alliances to develop firms, technology
By Staff Writer Steve Bills
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Joe Jones had a problem. His employer, a joint-venture chip-making company backed by Fujitsu and Sun Microsystems, was planning to shut down its Austin, Texas, plant as Sun migrated to a new microprocessor design. Jones had a vision to keep the plant in operation, but he also faced a daunting deadline: He needed to raise $6 million in six weeks.
Someone told Jones he should go see Sonia St. James, an Austin grandmother who was knitting together a high-technology networking group. Jones made the call, though he admitted his reservations about the prospect: "For a hard-tech guy, this idea of networking people together seemed awfully fuzzy at first."
But he made the call, and he got the money. While it did take the remainder of the year to close the deal, Jones went from a standing start in mid-May 1998 to a $6 million financial commitment by June 30.
"From the very first meeting, she was off to the races," recalled Jones, who today is CEO and president of BridgePoint Technical Manufacturing, the company that rose, phoenix-like, from the ashes of the Ross Technology joint venture. "Whatever our technical expertise, which we believe is considerable, it would have come to naught if Sonia hadn't put us in touch with the life support we needed."
St. James also remembered that meeting. "He had already been around to the VCs," she said, referring to the venture capitalists who often finance high-tech startups. "If you say six weeks to them, they just laugh."
'In front of a paradigm shift'
At the time, Ross employed about 45 workers, jobs that were saved when the financing came through. Today, employment has nearly doubled to 81 jobs, and BridgePoint has developed into a $20 million business doing chip testing and assembly for 40-plus corporate customers.
 "Now BridgePoint is right in front of a paradigm shift in the tech world," St. James said, "creating the semiconductor ecology in this whole region."
It is exactly the kind of development that St. James seeks to foster through the Austin-based Technical Business Network. "We do a lot of networking, linking these businesses together," she said, "with the technology they need and the business intelligence."
She has pursued the vision since her return to school in the 1990s, after her four children were grown. "This was right about the time Austin was starting the big growth spurt," she said. "I had a vision of what was going to happen, as far as entrepreneurism. It was a seething, bubbling, wonderful thing that was about to happen."
Over the course of 4-1/2 months, she talked to everyone she could reach in the local technical community, the chip makers and the software developers. When she approached the local chamber of commerce about hosting some kind of group, "they said it would be very hard to do because it was so disparate," she recalled. "That was just a challenge to me."
TBN now has 3,100 members in 22 states and 16 nations, St. James said: "People from all different types of industries get involved in the Technology Business Network."
Sponsoring meetings, interest groups
The group sponsors forums, seminars and meetings in a variety of areas, including computer chips, wireless technology, international business and application service providers. She uses the ASP example -- companies that use the Internet to rent software applications to business customers -- to emphasize the importance of the network.
"When I came up through the business world, it was not a necessity" to form alliances, she said. "In today's business world, it is an absolute necessity."
But in the case of the ASP, "the guy who is the service provider has to form all these alliances -- with vendors and customers -- even to have a business."
While TBN itself is structured as a non-profit membership organization, "I run it as a business," she said. "Personally I don't see a lot of difference between for-profit and non-profit."
And just as the Internet has spawned a wide range of new business models and economic opportunities, St. James believes networking organizations such as hers also create new opportunities.
"It is the unexpected results that make such a difference to medium and small-size companies," she said. "It's kind of like Christmas morning. You know some present is going to be there under the tree, but you're not sure what it's going to be."
Benefiting from connections
TBN also is benefiting from such connections, as it extends itself into the European marketplace. Through a connection with the Austin business-information company Hoover's Inc. (HOOV: Research, Estimates), TBN made contact with VercomNet BV of the Netherlands, a business affiliate that provides current-awareness services on European companies.
"How do you create a community of professionals?' asked Patrick Spain, CEO of Hoover's. (Time Warner, the parent company of CNNfn, has an ownership interest in Hoover's.) "We're not two big giant companies but two relatively small companies that might not normally be doing a lot of international activity."
The alliance should benefit both partners, Spain said. "We want to be in front of each other's audience because we can monetize that in certain ways."
A member of the Hoover's board first put executives in touch with VercomNet, and Hoover's then brought the opportunity to TBN, Spain said.
Now, TBN is planning a series of business-development seminars in Rotterdam and Amsterdam next month, and hopes to establish an office in the Netherlands early in 2001, St. James said.
As Spain put it: "What Sonia is doing makes it easier for companies to get together." 
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