Jenkins MBA’s Tech Focus Puts Alumn Michael Zapata on Entrepreneurial Path

Among the cluster of offices in a commercial park near NC State University's campus is one office with a simple sign on its door: Protochips

Inside, employees are creating the world’s most advanced holders, stages and specimen supports for electron microscopy; semiconductor technology is at the core of what they do. Leveraging the tools and techniques of semiconductor manufacturing, they integrate, develop and manufacture products used in both life science and materials science applications, from R&D through product quality assurance.

For the non-engineers reading this, it's complicated stuff. But for many students in Poole College's Jenkins MBA program or those considering the program, it's almost second nature. That's because the college was created to provide engineers, scientists and others with a technical background the business skills that will help them advance their careers and businesses based on technology. The college continues to focus on management of technology and innovation, especially in its Jenkins graduate programs.

Cross-disciplinary Education Fuels Entrepreneurship at NC State

Protochips is one example of what comes from this kind of cross-disciplinary education. The company, founded in 2002, currently employs about 20 full-time personnel. Most are engineers. Six have ties to the Poole College of Management, including its executive chairman, Michael Zapata. He graduated with a Master of Science in Management degree in 1994.

Other NC State alumni at Protochips are David Nackishi, Ph.D, chief executive officer; John Damiano, Ph.D,, chief technology officer; Kristen McLamb, senior accountant; Kyle Watson, marketing manager; and Steven Budd, product manager. Nackishi and Damiano were in the Jenkins MBA"s TEC concentration in 2003; Watson and Budd completed other concentrations in the Jenkins MBA program in 2011; McLamb graduated from Poole College"s Master of Accounting Program in 2011.

Their academic and career paths reflect Poole College's focus: the management of technology.

"I was in the original cohort in the (now MBA) program," Zapata said. "t was a really great experience because the program was still being rolled out and we had a lot of flexibility and input. As a result of it being a new program, some of the faculty members were new and full of ideas, and if you had a worthwhile alternative plan, they were open to hearing it."

Building a Technology and Innovation Management Focus

Zapata said he "was able to work with the administration as it developed a curriculum built around technology and innovation management. I was also fortunate to link up with a great classmate named Tony O'Driscoll for project work, and some incredibly forward thinking faculty," he said, citing Angus Kingon, then a materials scientist in NC State's College of Engineering and now a distinguished university researcher at Brown University, and Steve Markham, a management professor now in Poole College's Department of Management, Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

"They had this great idea to model innovation management and commercialization from bench to business and then optimize it," Zapata said. The faculty developed the TEC Algorithm which student teams still use when evaluating new technologies to determine their potential for commercialization. In the final semester, the students develop a business plan for one of the technologies.

"Tony and I and a couple of other folks were the student lackeys working with them on it," Zapata said. "It was very successful and became one of the program's first concentrations, which now is the technology entrepreneurship and commercialization concentration in the Jenkins MBA program."

Entrepreneurial Environment Attracts Faculty

"The curriculum has since brought in incredible faculty like Steve Barr and Ted Baker," Zapata said. Barr teaches management of technology, organizational behavior and organizational theory, and technology commercialization. Baker teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in entrepreneurship and is lead instructor of the MBA program's entrepreneurship concentration.

"A few years after graduate school, I had the privilege of helping provide leadership as the concentration became formalized. It was a great experience to be around such smart people and it taught me processes and skills that I still use nearly every day in the technology driven entrepreneurial environment," Zapata said.

Entrepreneurship education in Poole College continues to evolve. TEC now stands for The Entrepreneurship Collaborative, which includes both the entrepreneurship concentration in the college's bachelor's degree in business administration, and HiTEC, which includes the MBA program's entrepreneurship and technology commercialization concentration and an option to complete the concentration"s core courses and earn a graduate certificate. TEC also includes opportunities for the entrepreneurship community to engage with the college"s entrepreneurship faculty and students as mentors in the classroom or on projects.

In addition to his role with Protochip, Zapata works with ArrayXpress, a company based on genomics technology developed at NC State and run by Dr. Len van Zyl, a faculty member in NC State's College of Natural Resources.

"I'm a technology guy and I like to learn about new technology. I am drawn to companies with very smart scientists and engineers as leaders. I also prefer to invest in companies that have some type of defensible intellectual property so that there is a competitive barrier to companies being created in better funded regions," he said.

Giving Back through Service

Zapata serves as an executive chair for these companies, which means, he said "that I am a working board member and part of the management team. There are CEOs who runs the companies and I support them as well as take on strategic and tactical responsibilities."

He also serves on the North Carolina District Export Council.

"My role with U.S. Commerce is purely as a volunteer trying to give back to the community and to support the U.S. economy through the promotion of technology exports. This creates higher paying jobs in the U.S.," Zapata said. "It is the output-end of outstanding programs like the Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) initiatives that are trying to educate more of our youth in technological career fields," he said.

"The U.S. Commerce Department and the N.C. Department of Commerce do an amazing amount of work to support North Carolina and U.S.-based companies, but they need experienced volunteers from the business and academic communities to help them. Maybe a few folks reading this article can get involved," he said.

Zapata continues his involvement with NC State, serving as a volunteer Entrepreneur-In-Residence. He also engages in domestic and international consulting with companies, governments and universities, setting up innovation management and commercialization programs.

"On the venture side, I continue to invest in interesting technology companies with defensible intellectual property and smart management teams. My primary focus in life, however, continues to be working with early stage and growth technology companies to establish business operations and profitably bring new products to market," he said.

Applying Military Background to Business

The successes are both challenging and rewarding, he said. "Protochips is an example of a great team and great technology. These two things combined with perfect market timing to create a solid growth business. It is an intellectually engaging experience because every strategic decision impacts the valuation and revenue of the business. The Military Decision Making Processes and Course of Action selection are invaluable skills in this environment," he said.

"The biggest learning points, however, come from the failures, which present a different type of challenge," Zapata said. "People are always afraid to talk about their failures, but the United States is unique in accepting failures if you learned from them."

Case in point is a company he worked with early on, LIPSinc. "We were doing great in the Internet bubble economy of the late 90s, building revenue off of companies that had no revenue, just venture capital funds to spend," he said.

"The short version of the story is that the market crashed and there was no way we were going to survive as the large company we had become. To make it through we were going to have to sacrifice people, good people, with families and houses and bills. My HR director, Stacy Mangum, came to me and said that these things are painful but you need to do what is best for the overall team and company. It was one of those situations where in the short run you make the tough decisions that sacrifice the few for the many."

He drew on his military experience to get through. "The military teaches you how to turn off the emotions and make the tough decisions that are needed. You don't sleep at night, but you do get the job done," he said.

Zapata cites another example, in which he found himself in a situation where, he said, "I faced unethical behavior by a person in a position of significant power. I could have gone along with it, or at least walked away and been done with it, but the military taught me to stand up for what is right, even in the face of superior force and at great cost. I was very happy in the end and I know I would not have had the strength to do that without my military foundation."

When asked about the high points of his work with startups, he said, "My two greatest sources of enjoyment come from participating in the development of new products and opening up new international geographic markets. I got the international bug from the military. We are such a ethnocentric country and there is an entire world out there to sell products to; in many cases, with much bigger markets than we have domestically."

He also shared some thoughts about entrepreneurship education in Poole College and at NC State as a whole.

"I have always been very excited about entrepreneurial education at NC State. I was fortunate enough to have direct experience with the (early) TEC Program and the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program, which are both outstanding," Zapata said.

"NC State has become more entrepreneurial and now, in addition to faculty and students, many of the top administrators and intellectual property management people at NC State have become supporters and participants in entrepreneurial endeavors. NC State is playing a leadership role not just in developing the next generation of technology entrepreneurs, but also in driving economic growth in our state," he said.

Four Tips for Collegiate Entrepreneurs

Zapata also provided a few suggestions for today's collegiate entrepreneurs.

• Get real-world hands on experience with technology companies. A case study is nice, practical experience is better.
• If you are going to live in the Southeast, find technology deals to become involved in. We don’t have the capital in this region to win with just a business model. Have some intellectual property.
• Take risks. It takes failures to learn and you are young enough to recover from them. It is good training.
• Find experienced mentors. You don’t have enough time to make all the mistakes yourself.