Severinsky had to learn something about his chosen field. He responded to an employment ad placed by International Power Machines of Dallas. He had a good interview, and when the people there asked him back for a second conversation he found himself uncharacteristically hesitant.

"They offered me 30 percent more salary and it made me afraid. They needed a digital computer-monitoring system and most of my experience had been in analog circuits. I told the boss that I had never built a microprocessor-based digital system and he said, 'That's OK, you'd never before built instrumentation systems to work at 400°F, either.' Then I said I feared my English wasn't strong enough to supervise others, and the boss said he didn't have any trouble understanding me. Every time I found a reason not to take the job he found an answer. So I went to work for International Power Machines."

Alex Severinsky approached the academic side of business as deliberately as he managed his new engineering career. He signed up for business and marketing classes wherever he could find them in the Dallas area and began to accumulate an education in the formal side of management. As time passed on the job, he learned about business plans and market projections and pro forma operating statements.

Southern Methodist University's school of business offered a special entrepreneurial program, and Severinsky adopted Professor John Welsh as his mentor. He stuck with the program and claims to have taken every course Welsh recommended in accounting, marketing and business.

Severinsky felt it was time to strike out on his own-first with a business plan, and then with an actual business. "It didn't seem ethical to have my mind on developing my own business while I was working for another company," says Severinsky, "so I resigned from a good job at Unitron and supported my family by doing consulting work while I moved toward a company of my own."

Severinsky's chosen field was adjustable-speed motor drives. He felt that the wave of energy conservation that accompanied the great petroleum shortage was going to be a long-term fact of industrial life and he foresaw a good future in the business. One of his Dallas network contacts agreed and expressed a willingness to invest in a well conceived venture. And now Severinsky kept his eyes open for a second investor who might also have enough technical background to serve as a good sounding board.

The Best and Worst Moments

Alex Severinsky absolutely refuses to identify any particular day or moment as either the best or worst in his experiences of starting two small businesses.

"Good and bad things happen every day," he says, "that's what business is all about." "I'll tell you what a bad day would be," he says with a chuckle: "a bad day would be when you find out that all 2,000 products you sent out for field testing are defective. That would be terrible." "A good thing is when you're working on 10 different potential sales and finally one of them turns into a firm order."

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In one of those coincidences that make such good reading, Severinsky was doing a consulting job for a company that wanted to develop a UPS for personal computers. In his discussions with the executives of this client company led to a decision on the company's part to become a majority shareholder in a new company that Severinsky would head.

Severinsky tapped his network once again to find an attorney to handle the details of incorporation and organization. The combination of Professor Welsh's guidance in developing a business plan and Severinsky's Dallas business contacts had made the process of business formation look comparatively easy. Severinsky had purpose, structure, financing and a company name. M-Power opened for business in 1985.

"We built a lot of UPS products. The company grew steadily for about a year and a half and then a disagreement arose between myself and the majority share holders regarding the long-term direction of the company. The best solution seemed to be to merge M-Power with the parent company and pay off the other investors. I think they were happy with the outcome."

Severinsky was now a man with faith in uninterruptible power supplies and no company.

"Personal considerations influenced me to move to the Washington, D.C., area," Severinsky explained, "and I now realized something that I had not given a lot of thought to before. The eastern seaboard of the United States is the oldest part of the country, and as such has some of the oldest power-grid components. If electrical energy-supply uncertainties are the driving force behind the UPS market, then the East Coast has to be the easiest place to sell a UPS. I felt optimistic.”

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