Paul Shain is on to the next project

By Mark Crawford

After Paul Shain retired from CDW Corp. in October 2008, he didn’t quite know what to do with himself. It had been quite a ride over the previous years; Shain joined Berbee Information Networks Corp. as president in 2000 and later moved up to CEO in 2005. He thoroughly enjoyed the dynamic work environment that was teeming with creativity, synergy and product development success, which resulted in a compound annual revenue growth rate of 37 percent from January 2000 to December 2006.

In 2006, Berbee was acquired by CDW. “We decided to sell because we could foresee significant industry consolidation was coming our way and we wanted to be driving this change, rather than having to react to it,” Shain said. “It was clear more capital would be required to build a national footprint, and merging with a larger entity would make this easier.”

After the sale, founder Jim Berbee left to pursue other interests and Shain stayed on with the new parent for two years. “Although I enjoyed my time at CDW, I knew my real goal was to again return to the CEO role in a high-growth, entrepreneurial company,” he said. “That meant that at some point I would have to leave CDW.” In October 2008, he did just that.

During his time off, Shain spent time up North, took care of neglected chores around the house and started looking for a new opportunity. “Mostly, I took time to relax and figure out what I was going to do next.”

The next challenge

It didn’t take him long to find the next challenge: Shain is now at the helm of Singlewire, a new start-up that was created to further develop and market a high-value communications platform the company purchased from CDW in April 2009. Designed by Berbee software engineers almost a decade ago, the main product line, InformaCast, is a popular software application that leverages a client’s existing network infrastructure to provide digital paging to phones, desktop computers and IP speakers. More than 2,000 customers in 35 countries currently use this technology.

Shain, 46, grew up in Madison and earned an MBA in finance from UW-Madison. He spent more than 12 years at Robert W. Baird in Milwaukee as a research analyst, working in the area of IT services and eventually becoming director of research.

“The training to be a research analyst was heavy on the analytical side of accounting and finance,” said Shain, “but I quickly learned that it was only half the story. There was so much more to what made a good company — and even then it might not be a good investment, if everyone already knew about it.

“In the end, I learned not to be afraid of changing my mind and to constantly evaluate new information against your hypothesis.”

The most enjoyable part for Shain during his career with Berbee/CDW was working with a highly talented group of people. “This gave us significant flexibility to build the company and grow at a high rate,” Shain said. “With all this talent, we were also able to define and build a company around core values we felt would create the best situation for our staff and their families.”

Shain is doing the same thing at Singlewire; the core engineering, customer support and sales team members that built InformaCast within Berbee have all joined Singlewire, including former president Greg Sliwicki, former CFO Brett Rimkus and senior salesperson Mike Koehn.

“Since we have such a unique software application, customers often find us through the Internet, referrals, our partners (Cisco and other value-added resellers) and direct interaction with customers,” he said.

“Organizations are looking for better ways to communicate both emergency and non-emergency notifications to large groups of people in the most efficient and flexible manner possible. Our software allows this to happen easily, so it’s fun to engage customers, find out what they need and show them that our software can usually do what they want, right out of the box.”

A look to the future

Shain believes the country’s economic recovery will be slow. “The Capital Region cannot escape the general economic slowdown,” he said. “Although we are insulated somewhat from the housing meltdown, we are not insulated from the tightening financial markets and what will likely be an inflationary environment in the future due to excessive government spending. Organizations must innovate and be aggressive in figuring out ways to move their products to the top of the spending priority list at those companies that are in a position to spend money.”

The weak economy, however, is not slowing down R&D at Singlewire, where engineers are adding new features and functions to the software. “We want to be sure that our software integrates to emerging social networking sites such as Twitter,” Shain said. “In fact, we will be launching Version 7.0 of our software in the next few weeks.”

Singlewire is also moving into the physical security market, where its software will allow communications between security devices and security staff in multiple ways.

“An example might be a motion sensor that responds to an intruder, and we alert the security officer and attach a video clip of the activity that set off the motion detector,” Shain said.

Shain wants Singlewire to be the leading notification platform in the world, and he believes this is an achievable goal.

“Our objective is a 20 to 30 percent growth rate in the years ahead, which is similar to what we generated with Berbee Information Networks,” he said.

Shain said he is pleased to be part of Madison’s high-tech sector again. “Madison has a unique combination of a world-class university, an outstanding technology transfer mechanism in WARF and facilities at UW Research Park that foster new start-ups. This kind of environment attracts both investment dollars and talented people.”

Shain is optimistic about the future of the technology sector in the Capital Region, even if it is a relatively small sector right now. “We have lots of work to do at Singlewire, and with a market potential that is expanding every day, I suspect we’ll be busy for a while,” he said. 

Paul Shain’s three habits of highly effective companies

1. Hire the right people and create an environment where they can succeed. “For any company to prosper, it needs the right mix of people who work together well and have the right tools to do their jobs.”

2. Foster an environment of communication and collaboration. “This encourages entrepreneurial thinking and allows organizations to constantly adjust to take advantage of changes in the marketplace. If everyone understands change is inevitable, they will begin to welcome adjustments as part of the requirements of working in a high-performing organization.”

3. Measure everything. “Having a clear set of measureable statistics to determine if you are doing well or not, and more importantly, allowing you to make changes along the way, creates an environment of accountability for a company. It also tends to take the emotion out of decisions and replaces it with factual data.”

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