Analytic Entrepreneur
SPADAC FOUNDER COMBINES GEOSPATIAL AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS TO ENABLE “DECISIONS WITH CERTAINTY AND ACCURACY.”
A math whiz in high school who got turned on to geographic information systems in college, Mark Dumas has combined expertise and enthusiasm for technology with a heritage of entrepreneurship to create a company, SPADAC, that is a growing force in geospatial and other intelligence analysis.
At 35, Dumas has already stepped back from the day-to-day details of running his five-year-old business, focusing instead as chairman and chief executive officer on long-term strategy and acquisitions, such as the company’s recent purchase of Earth- Where Technology. But he continues to guide the vision of the future of SPADAC, whose core competency is a methodology for fusing, modeling and analyzing data to better understand the world and predict future trends and events.
With analytical and product solutions that range from risk assessment and resource allocation to opportunity identification and discovery, and a dedication to creating actionable intelligence for decision makers in the defense, homeland security and intelligence communities, as well as business, SPADAC has enjoyed rapid growth since its founding. The private, venturecapital- backed company scored a revenue gain of nearly 3,000 percent over three years, reaching $8.8 million in 2006. Just in 2007, the number of employees has gone from 75 to 120.
Behind that growth is a young man with an evident passion for the subject matter and a set of business skills that have matured along with this still-developing industry.
“As an electric engineering major in college, I was introduced to a GIS system, as we used to call them, and taught myself early ESRI technology,” Dumas said. “I just fell in love with the field when I was doing some cooperative work in college. So when I got out, I decided to apply for something in that domain, and ended up in Washington, D.C., where I took a job with SAIC doing geospatial work. I got cleared and started doing programming, project task leadership, and system development and design.
“At SAIC, I engaged at various tasks, including plume modeling, hazardous assessment and catastrophe modeling. So my interests were honed early-on in terms of the more complicated decision-making things that you can do with geospatial technology,” he observed.
After leaving SAIC for a brief sojourn with another company, Dumas set out on his own, backed by a contract with his first client, which made it possible to expand the business from one person, himself, to where SPADAC is today.
There has been a lot of learning along the way. “I’ve been CEO of SPADAC longer than I was in total as an employee anywhere else. I’ve had to learn about the types of people that you try to recruit to the company, and to motivate people and give them opportunities to be successful. Those are skills that I’ve learned on the job—I didn’t get an MBA.
“I’ve also had to learn to get people to trust each other and work together efficiently,” he continued. “Then there are the financial aspects of the constraints that you have in managing resources, and going after the maximum return on investment for the company. Some investments have immediate gain, such as hiring someone to write code and seeing productivity from Day One. But other investments are strategic in nature, and might take several years to cultivate.”
INTELLIGENCE SYNERGY
Dumas’s entrepreneurial spirit comes at least in part from his father, who ran a successful financial data-analysis company in Memphis, Tenn., in the 1980s and 1990s for the mortgage and banking industry.
“So I guess the apple doesn’t fall from the tree, except that I fell in love with geospatial technologies,” he recalled. “I learned a lot from watching his business—that you can do very well, but also shared his hard times, and lessons on what to do and not to do.”
That experience—and the possession of an existing contract with a customer to provide revenue from the beginning—cushioned some of the risks and doubts that always accompany a startup venture. But Dumas’s critical insight may have come from working side by side with intelligence analysts, where he saw the value of combining the geospatial and intelligence disciplines.
“Working with intelligence experts gave us a lot of ideas and synergy. I saw the power of combining the two. So we started hiring the quality folks that were highly interested in our approach. If you think about it, isn’t that what the word GEOINT embodies?” he said.
“In 2003, we were combining geospatial analysts with intelligence analysts, who had subject matter expertise from the military domain. Shielding the customer from having to worry about some of the complexities of the data analysis, while adding that domain expertise to our decision making cycle, we ‘baked’ a better answer for clients to use to solve their problems. We would work very closely, while employing different tradecrafts and techniques, to get the right answer out.
“Today, we are roughly equally divided between geospatial and intelligence analysts. I consider SPADAC to be the premier vision of a true geospatial intelligence company. That is our character and culture, and I believe no other business out there is quite like it,” Dumas said.
With company president Barry Culman handling most operational issues, Dumas now concentrates on reaching out to potential customers and business partners, evaluating acquisition possibilities and mentoring within SPADAC. The company is investing strongly in technology and business development, as well as internal improvements such as the accounting infrastructure.
From a client perspective, he noted, one of the major changes is that the company has engaged in a number of new research and development opportunities for the government, with contracts with agencies such as the Office of Naval Research and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Dumas added, “We’ve increased our professional analytical services footprint by adding new customers in that domain. That’s where we put analysts out into the field to support customers in their critical decision-making process. We’ve been increasing our footprint in that realm. We’ve also added other types of subject matter experts, such as financial analysts who are part of the geospatial intelligence process. We’ve got people with emerging skill sets in oil and gas exploration, and aviation security experts on staff. So we’ve really grown in terms of our subject matter expertise base.”
MUTUAL BENEFITS
A key development for SPADAC this year has been a strategic investment in the company by GeoEye, a major force in the geospatial industry. The new relationship will give SPADAC an opportunity to explore international markets, he noted, and create openings for mutually beneficial marketing.
“Because we are a geospatial intelligence firm, we’ve got quite a bit of data analysis that we do,” Dumas said. “What better way to seed the efforts that we do by bringing in a company that has a way to collect data globally as well? That’s a great foundation.
“If we’re working with someone, the first thing we ask is if they have some baseline visual imagery. We can refer a sale to GeoEye, for example, and they can do referrals for us. So to the extent that we are doing things that they are not doing in their business, it’s an opportunity for us to expand,” he added.
Another important business ally has been Pequot Ventures, the venture capital firm that has provided the bulk of the investment in SPADAC.
“It’s important for people to understand the value of the Pequot relationship,” Dumas said. “It’s been great so far. We’ve got a blue chip investor who’s sitting on the board, helping to provide guidance and support for our every move. It’s almost priceless. Jerry Poch, who’s on our board, has been on the board of billion-dollar companies, as has Sterling Phillips, ex-CEO of Analex Corp.”
The company’s goal for the future, Dumas said, is “to be the premier company providing answers for critical decision making. Looking at it from that perspective, geospatial technology is just a means to an end. We’re really answer-driven and customerfocused in our philosophy.
“From a visionary perspective, we like to think of ourselves as trying to make the world a safer and more productive place, where people can make decisions with certainty and accuracy. Most of our client base is in the Department of Defense/Homeland Security community, and we pride ourselves on achieving the results that we have. We’ve gotten messages from people down range who appreciate what we’re doing,” he said.
“As long as we keep signs of appreciation, we know that we’re doing something special and people will take note of what we’re doing. The company will continue to grow and add to our solution set, including new types of offerings through the professional services operation,” Dumas said. ♦
