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Software maker, Greg Gianforte’s unlikely location, approach prove successful for RightNow Technologies

In the late 1990s, when investors were giving millions to zany high-tech ideas, such as using a wisecracking sock puppet to sell pet supplies on the Internet, Greg Gianforte chose a different strategy — and an unusual location.

By MATT GOURAS Associated Press Casper Star Tribnue

He shunned the high-tech hotspots of Silicon Valley and Seattle in favor of a rural setting in Montana. And he decided to "bootstrap" his 1997 startup, RightNow Technologies, starting tiny and building up only as sales allowed.

Six years later, the tombstones of hundreds of 1990s high-tech ideas litter the business landscape, while Gianforte is continuing to expand.

"We are the David right in there with all the Goliaths," Gianforte said.

His product is a software package intended to improve a company’s customer service by integrating Internet, computer and telephone services.

One feature links a company’s Web site to a database that determines the most common customer questions. Customers with questions first see the most common questions of others, and the answers.

RightNow Service 6.0 runs the customer support portion of Web sites for hundreds of big companies, along with the computer programs that customer service agents use.

It might not be the sexiest software out there, but it’s one that works behind the scenes and one companies want, Gianforte said. RightNow’s 1,000 corporate clients include big-name companies such as Sanyo, Ticketmaster, Toyota and Remington Arms.

As popular as RightNow’s products are with corporations, its business atmosphere and location in the heart of an outdoor Mecca have proven extremely popular in the high-tech job world. One San Francisco classified ad Gianforte placed for a job in Bozeman drew 2,500 responses.

RightNow’s workers either love the outdoors — or learn to once they arrive in Bozeman.

The corporate campus features trout ponds. Employee cubicles often contain more pictures of big fish or stunning vistas than of family members.

"Some catch the first light hunt and then are here first thing for a conference call," said Rob Irizarry, the company’s director of technical support.

And while many of the software company’s workers are graduates of Bozeman’s Montana State University, most worked for a while in the West’s well-known high tech centers before finding RightNow.

"They have to live in Seattle or Portland to figure out it’s a miserable life," said Gianforte, 42.

Steve Daines, vice president of customer care, is a fifth-generation Montanan who left the state for a corporate job. He was working for Procter & Gamble before he decided to return and found a job at RightNow.

"The icing on the cake for me is that I thought that you couldn’t be a part of a global business and live in this kind of place," said Daines.

Gianforte had originally decided to retire at 33 on the money he got selling another company he helped start. He moved to Bozeman, where he had vacationed since he was a kid, in the mid-1990s. But he found that retirement didn’t suit him.

"I didn’t want a tombstone that read, ‘He caught a lot of big fish,"’ Gianforte said. "There has to be a higher calling than that."

He decided to try to start another software company from scratch — this time taking advantage of the Internet to build in a small town he loved.

"You say that to a person in New York or California and they say, ‘No, it can’t be done. You don’t have the resources to do that,"’ Gianforte said.

He wasn’t even sure at first if his plan for a very specific customer service software would sell.

In 1997, he started cold-calling companies, asking what type of features they would like. Then, the software engineer locked himself in a room for 60 days and wrote the program.

He set up his first office down the hall from his bedroom. He added employees only as often as new sales allowed. Now his company boasts about 270 workers, making it one of Bozeman’s largest private employers. It has sales and service offices in Dallas, San Mateo, London, Tokyo and Sydney, Australia.

An industry report ranked RightNow’s software package ahead of similar software offered by many bigger-name firms, such as Avaya, Oracle and PeopleSoft. He said the program gives consumers better answers on the Web, cutting calls to costly customer service centers and allowing employees to focus on the stickiest problems.

"We help our customers better serve their customers," Gianforte said.

And since he didn’t give a big chunk of the company to venture capitalists at startup, Gianforte said he wasn’t pressured to prematurely bring it public. Now he said he can wait until the market for high-tech initial public offerings improves.

The company boasts 18 straight quarters of revenue growth, Gianforte said.

He’s proud that his workers earn an average annual salary of about $50,000, roughly 2.5 times the average local wage. And he said he’s focused on reaching his goal of getting 2,000 high paying jobs in Bozeman.

If for no other reason, it would prove a profitable venture can be built in the middle of outdoor paradise.

"We do not apologize for a second that we are in Montana," he said. "Montana can really have a world-class business with no apologies."

Gianforte said Bozeman, sometimes called a "cappuccino cowboy" town as it’s grown to about 30,000 people, is the perfect place for a high-tech company like his. Commutes are short, and there is easy access to recreation. Homes are relatively cheap, and the Internet has removed many restrictions on where a company is headquartered, he said.

Some advantages are not so obvious, such as the rural West’s tendency to disregard social class, which Gianforte said can lead to better teamwork.

"We really believe everyone is important here. The receptionist’s job is as important as any job here," he said.

Still, the company has learned life in the northern Rocky Mountains can be a tough transition for some recruits from corporations in big cities on the coast.

"It definitely helps if they’ve grown up in either a small town, a cold climate," Gianforte said, "or just really like to ski."

On the Net:

RightNow Technologies: http://www.rightnow.com

http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2003/10/05/news/business/b6a50b007d1654171ada40319deb5a09.txt

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