FORT WAYNE – Ask about FourthWave and you’re met with blank stares, carefully chosen words and shoulder shrugs.
And these reactions come from those once integral to the technology holding company.
When businessman Don Willis established his Fort Wayne-based business in 2003, backers hailed it as a new-economy venture. According to FourthWave’s website, its purpose is “centered on the development and acquisition of innovative software.”
Seven years later, however, Willis says the nation’s weak economy has FourthWave in a “holding mode” because it has not been able to sell emergency management software developed by SentryPoints, a major division of the company that also lists VersiTech as a subsidiary.
A significant setback came in 2005, when the city of Fort Wayne declined to buy the software for $4 million. The decision came after miscommunication over the price of the SentryPoints package.
The company’s challenges became most apparent when Willis and his partners began talks this summer to sell the FourthWave headquarters, 300 E. Main St., to Arts United for an undisclosed sum. Jim Sparrow, executive director of the group, said it approached the owners about buying the two-story, 37,000-square-foot building.
“We are in negotiations, but it would be a very good fit for us,” particularly because the Fort Wayne Museum of Art sits across the street, he said. Sparrow wants to create a hub that would house at least three other arts groups and a gallery at the FourthWave site.
“It just makes sense for us,” he said.
The Allen County Assessor’s Office lists the building’s worth at $1.4 million. The attractive structure, with its prominent windows and airy feel, was headquarters for NIPSCO before local entrepreneur Jerry Henry Jr. brought Willis in as a partner to buy it. They bought the building for about $2.5 million in 2004.
“It’s always been an office building first,” Willis said, adding that other tenants occupy the building. “We only used it for software demonstrations and conference room space. I hope (Arts United is) able to pull it off and purchase it.”
Other passions
A onetime Magnavox employee, Willis left the company after more than two decades to found Command System Inc., which created crisis management software to help law enforcement and military personnel make real-time decisions.
The business was so fruitful that Willis sold it to General Dynamics for an estimated $100 million in 2002 and founded FourthWave a year later.
Education is a passion of Willis’, too, so in 2006 he acquired the former YWCA campus on Wells Street to open an Imagine charter school, which has experienced mixed results. This month, sponsor Ball State University became irritated when Imagine MASTer Academy registered more students than allowed.
Willis now works out of an office at the Wells Street charter school campus along with software engineers and other staff. They occupy modest quarters with makeshift cubicles.
And while the accommodations are a far cry from a more high-profile downtown location, Willis makes no apologies.
“We’re not going through anything any other business isn’t going through right now with the economy,” he said. “There are some other things we have going on, but I’m not at liberty to talk about them now.”
Looking back
Neither are his former FourthWave officers.
Tim Dirig was the company’s chief financial officer. He now is continuing his accounting and business consulting and is facility manager at the FourthWave building. He said SentryPoints was the victim of “poor timing.”
“About as bad as it could get,” Dirig said of the software that FourthWave intended to sell to local and state governments.
Willis’ plan to sell the software to the city fell flat because the City Council didn’t view the service as a priority. A few years later, the economy tanked.
“It happens to the best of businesses,” Dirig said. “What can I say?”
Dirig was part of a team that included former state Sen. Tom Teague, who was FourthWave president. Asher Agency founder Tim Borne helped market the company, and business consultant Karen Goldner was an administrator for adVenture Fund, a FourthWave project that invested in companies with new technology promising rapid growth.
Goldner said she worked with FourthWave only on a contracting basis, but considering the notable names linked with it, she understands why some may wonder what went wrong.
“It was a very exciting company, and it helped a number of local businesses, but sometimes things don’t always go the way you hope they go,” said Goldner, also a City Council member.
Borne said he has lost track of the goings-on at FourthWave and hasn’t “heard about them.”
Teague also said he hasn’t kept up with the company but said Willis’ emergency software “was probably ahead of its time.”
“It was developed for the military and it was trying to be adapted for the civilian marketplace,” said Teague, who commutes to Arlington, Va., where he is director of intellectual property development for Abrams Learning & Information Systems Inc. Abrams Learning is a homeland security and domestic preparedness operation.
“In the post-9/11 society, there was a real scramble to develop the right kinds of products. It is a very competitive marketplace. I think Mr. Willis did everything he could to bring the (software) to market.”
Taking a chance
Willis declined to release financial information. In 2007, an Indiana Business Journal report listed his company as a venture capital fund with $850,000 under management.
“I don’t know where they got that from, but we are not a venture capital fund,” Willis said.
Karl LaPan, president and chief executive officer of the Northeast Indiana Innovation Center, said Midwest investors have a low tolerance for failure when it comes to high-tech ventures.
“There are new company births and new company deaths,” he said. “We have to allow these new types of companies to get up to bat, and if they strike out, so be it.”