Interview / Larry Tanning

'It's just that my sport has changed'

Larry Tanning, chairman, president and CEO, Tanning Technology Corporation, probably has one of the weirdest resumés in the IT industry -- if not in the whole world. Fifteen years as a ski-bum; an unpromising entry into the IT industry at the age of 40; four years as a star salesman; and then the founding of his own hugely profitable company, Tanning Technologies, a heavy-duty solutions company that likes to style itself as the "Goldman Sachs of the IT industry".

Tanning himself is reputed to be one of the most charismatic men in the IT industry, and was, in fact, once referred to by Forbes magazine as the "Sultan of Schmooze" for his almost mythical abilities to win over people. His partner, the co-founder of Tanning Technology Corporation, is an Indian technology whiz, Bipin Agarwal. Together they have formed a great team: one romances the clients, the other sits in the backroom, delivering the goods. Anvar Alikhan met Larry Tanning when he was on a visit to Hyderabad to set up a new development centre recently.

You have a really weird career path. How did it all happen?

Life has many aspects. Too many people get slotted into a narrow focus: just work, work, work, and no play. I found myself in that syndrome back in the seventies, when I first graduated and joined a giant corporation. I somehow felt I was missing something important in life.

My grandparents came to the US from Norway, where they lived in the mountains and fjords. So I guess in my blood there was a desire to be in the mountains. I decided to take one winter off to go skiing. And that one winter became 15 years, some of the best years of my life. They were very active years, focused on very different aspects of my self: on skiing, theatre, music and creativity.

Were you rich? I mean how did you support yourself through all this?

No, I was not rich. I just did whatever I could to make a living. A Master's degree didn't do you much good in a small mountain town of Colorado, with a population of 400 people. So I became a builder, I played piano in restaurants, I directed theatre. And I made just about enough to get by. You didn't need a lot of money when your life was focused on climbing mountains and skiing and rafting rivers.

It sounds like a great life. So why did you quit?

Yes, it was a great life - if you like being poor. But I was 40 years old. I had a family. I had to move on.

Were there any learnings in your ski-bum avatar that you were able to carry forward into your corporate career?

I suppose it's just that my sport has changed. At that time my sport was skiing. Today my sport is building and running a company.

As a ski-bum, I may have been poor, but I was rich in experience. When I joined this industry in 1989 I had never touched a computer before. But I knew much about life. And life and business, ultimately, is all about relationships. I think I have the ability to build relationships with employees, and with customers. People want to work with people whom they like, and trust. You must always stay true to your word. Do what you say, and say what you do.

And how do you react when you are referred to by the media as the "Sultan of Schmooze"?

When the media does a story on you, they'll obviously try to pick a title that'll make waves. You know that. But I think that article by Forbes magazine - the one that referred to me as the "Sultan of Schmooze" was actually very positive. I think maybe they could have used a better title, but if you read that article, everybody they quoted came across as saying we work with Larry Tanning because he's a great guy, and because we know he'll deliver.

And what better compliment can you have than that? Than having people say they like you, and that you do what you say, and say what you do?

The co-founder of your company is an Indian, Bipin Agarwal. Who exactly is he, and what makes him so special?

I'm glad you asked that. Bipin Agarwal is a very unusual man. He is like a brother to me and we go back more than 10 years together. I first met him in 1989, when I had just joined the technology industry. We make a tremendous team. I am very much a people person, a relationship person, with strong business skills. Bipin, on the other hand, is a tremendous technology intellect. And on top of that he also has a tremendous business sense. So we make a great combination.

In fact, there was an article in a US business magazine not long ago in which they called Bipin and me "the Yin and the Yang" - but I don't know who was the yin and who was the yang.

There are lots of Indian IT professionals who have become become icons, both in the US and here in India. So how come we have never heard of Bipin Agarwal before?

It's just that Bipin is a very low-profile kind of guy. In fact, Tanning as a company has kept a very low profile. It's only in the past one year perhaps that have we become public. When Bipin and I started this company we had no money, so we always had our nose to the grindstone, focusing on one project, one customer at a time. We built this company not on marketing or hype, but on word of mouth. The word of mouth got around. Clients would say, hey, you ought to go talk to those guys at Tanning.

As the guy running the technology Bipin was always the one in the trenches, very focused on our projects. But now we are beginning to change all that. Now Bipin has been appointed General Manager and is running all of North America for us. It is our goal that in the next coming year he should become more widely known, to be out front and centre. So I expect you'll get to read much more about him.

Jim Clark, the founder of Netscape, once famously said "We need to get a lot more Indians into this company." What exactly do you think makes Indians so valued in the US IT industry?

Maybe because there's no cricket in the US, so the Indians keep themselves busy working -- unlike my fellow Americans who are more concerned with football or baseball or going to discos and clubs.

But seriously, I think you have a great educational system here, a very competitive system. So Indians have a strong education ethic that translates into a strong work ethic. And that is very different from the ethic of my fellow Americans or Europeans, who like to have lots of vacations and view life the same way. Partly, it's the cultural background, and partly it's the superior educational system and technology training that is so evident here in India. There's no question, the focus of technology and engineering skills is superior to what we have in the US.

We ourselves, when we started out, had about 30-40 per cent Indians on our team.

The difference in competence between those Indians who have made it big and those who haven't is sometimes very small. So what is the role that networking plays in all this? Or what some people are talking about as "The Indian Mafia Factor"?

Good question. If there is an Indian mafia, I am obviously not privy to that. But I do know that those Indians who have been very successful there are those who are very outgoing and proactive. And this is related to interpersonal skills and relationships. What we're talking about, ultimately, is a matter of leadership.

Certainly people like Bipin Agarwal have a fine mix of not only technology skills, but also people skills. And that, to me, is the big, big difference. I see too many talented technical people just stay in the background and never shine, simply because they don't have the aggressiveness and proactiveness.

Yours is a relatively small company, with a turnover of less than $100 million. Yet you show the kind of profits that a much larger company would show. How exactly do you manage this?

We've always distanced ourselves from the others by doing the really difficult, really complex tasks. It's this kind of heavy lifting that differentiates us. We can deliver solutions that involve difficult integration and complex processing solutions that really benefit our customers. Our customers are willing to pay for this kind of capability, because we bring their business strategies alive for them.

These customers are companies like Federal Express, Ameritech, Maersk Lines, MCI WorldCom, E*Trade and Blockbuster Video.

And who exactly do you bat against? Who are your closest competitors?

The big, very blue-chip companies like IBM, Andersen Consulting, the Big 5. They're the large-scale systems integrators that have competencies in custom solutions and core integration systems.

So where does this new India development centre figure in your scheme of things at Tanning?

As you can imagine, with Bipin as my partner, we have a close emotional link with India. And this visit to India is very gratifying to me, personally. We had a vision years ago that the future was going to be about delivering global solutions with a global organisation. So setting up this new facility in Hyderabad is very gratifying. It will account for 75 people out of the 450 we employ all over the world.

Traditionally, the average person in our company has nearly 10 years experience. And that has been instrumental in our ability to attract the sophisticated Global 500 customers that we have, customers like Federal Express, Ameritech and MCI WorldCom. But now we are augmenting that model with India, where we are looking at hiring younger people. These young people will be integrated very closely with our experienced people out there in the frontlines.

In all this don't you miss being a ski-bum?

Yes, in a way I do.

So will Larry Tanning go back to becoming a ski-bum?

Yes, Larry Tanning will go back to being a ski-bum. I enjoy my current job very much. But I am focused on going back to a very physical life. I'm going to retire and go right back to being a ski-bum. And, no, I don't expect to be 65 when I do that.

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