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GCS Research LLC of Missoula wins Partner of the Year Award from ESRI

For a small company trying to grow and scrambling for capital to do so, a little recognition never hurts.

“It’s big for us. It helps to distinguish us from a lot of other companies,” said Alex Philp, president of GCS Research LLC http://www.gcs-research.com .

By Robert Struckman of the Missoulian http://missoulian.com/

Philp was referring to a regional Partner of the Year Award the small technology company will receive in several weeks from ESRI Inc. http://www.esri.com , a giant in the field of geographic information systems. ESRI stands for Environmental Systems Research Institute.

About 90 other businesses vied for the award in the Northwest, Philp said.

“I hope it (the award) helps. We’re desperately trying to find some working capital,” Philp said.

Much of the rhetoric about the frontier of western Montana’s emerging economy concerns firms like GCS- Geographic Communication Systems.

It is a technology company that sprang from research at the University of Montana http://www.umt.edu/research/staff.htm . Its markets are global. It’s part of a small but growing group of Missoula firms that together amount to something of a hotbed: Visual Learning Systems http://www.vls-inc.com , Lupine Logic, Inc http://lupinelogic.com/, Geodata Services Inc. http://www.geodata-mt.com , and others.

In 1997, Philp came to the UM School of Forestry http://www.forestry.umt.edu/ to pursue a doctorate degree. That led him to the NASA-funded Earth Observing System Education Project http://www.eoscenter.com/ .

At EOS, Philp and other researchers gleaned data from a variety of satellites and made it accessible through the Internet.

“I dabbled enough to know it had a future,” Philp said.

Over the next three years, he collaborated on a number of innovative systems. The goal was always to make data useful.

That’s why, when the timing seemed right, Philp decided to “hang up a shingle.” He knew from experience that raw data – from satellites and other sources – was available in droves. The struggle, Philp explained, has always been to communicate it effectively to those who need it.

Philp had no business background. But he had the gumption to take out a second mortgage to make it happen. And he had a solid idea.

“We’re all about building systems to allow people to interact with information,” he said.

At first, he operated out of the basement of his house. Then he moved to a tiny office. But all along his clients were respectable. He did work for NASA, the Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“That first year was a struggle. We managed to make some revenue, managed to keep it together,” he said.

The company grew and formed some significant business partnerships.

Then a year ago, GCS moved into office space a MonTEC http://www.montec.org , the business incubator run by Dick King.

“It was great to get into a place with windows,” Philp said.

There were other positive changes too. Philp brought on board two key partners who invested in the company. The networking opportunities and entrepreneurial spirit at MonTEC helped, too. The company grew to five employees and won a national award from the U.S. Geological Survey.

“We’ve been working hard, investing as much as we can in developing products. We have competitors but we also have strategic allies,” he said.

The toughest part of the progression was finding capital to make it happen.

“Our financing was very, very poor, very lean. What I did, essentially, was borrow money against my house, if you will. I used that initial capital to buy my first computer and software,” he said.

It amounted to an investment of about $20,000.

“We used that to bootstrap the company,” he said.

His searches for investment capital were fruitless. Banks wanted to see his collateral. He didn’t have any. He met with investors in Portland and Seattle.

“We found it incredibly hard as a business – with a three-year track record and an interesting product – to find investors,” he said.

But Philp and his crew gutted it out.

“When I left UM, I was unemployed for a month, trying to think of what I could do. I had offers, but that would mean a move to Seattle or Denver or Omaha,” he said.

But he, and his family, decided to stay.

“I put the stake down here, come hell or high water,” he said.

Things are looking up. A few local investors are interested, Philp said. And then there’s that award from ESRI.

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