Entrepreneur Quiz

Name two Vermont entrepreneurs who have made significant contributions to the state's economy.  Your answer says a lot about Vermont's attitudes and beliefs.

Most of you probably listed Ben and Jerry.  Certainly they are associated with Vermont and have contributed to Vermont's image outside of the state.  The company employs several hundreds of Vermonters and helps support the Vermont dairy economy. 

But my answer would be Bob Hoel and Rich Tarrant, the founders of IDX (now part of GE Health Care--but hey, Ben and Jerry's is now part of Unilever).  Hoel and Tarrant founded a company that employs more people than Ben and Jerry's, and my guess is that their wages are significantly higher than B&J's.  In part that's because B&J produce a product that does not need a lot of skilled workers on the production end.  There are skilled, highly paid workers in administration, research, marketing, and the like, but the folks who fill up the pints in Waterbury probably don't make as much.

IDX, on the other hand, employs skilled personnel in a part of the service sector that is growing rapidly (those health care dollars have to go somewhere).  GE paid $1.2 billion for IDX, compared to the $320 million Unilever paid for B&J.

One company, and one set of entrepreneurs, is not any better than the other.  Both provided a variety of high quality jobs that would not have existed without the creativity and hard work of those four entrepreneurs.  We could use more people like them in Vermont.

But if you gave this quiz to a random sample of Vermonters, I would guess that 90% would list Ben and Jerry as the entrepreneurs they recognize.  Two are household names and two are almost unknown (and would be totally unknown if Rich Tarrant hadn't spent millions trying, unsuccessfully, to get people to know him in 2006).   We should celebrate Bob and Rich's accomplishments in Vermont's schools and in public discourse as much as we do Ben and Jerry's.   That we don't is a disappointing commentary on how we view entrepreneurs in the state.

Comments

[Jeff Conner]

Art,

Another little know entrepreneur is Don Kendal owner of Mack Molding or Mack Group in Arlington. He has grown a medium sized molding operation into a one of the nations largest molders including a world class manufacturing and assembly facility. To his credit he grew his company during the hay days of the computer boom but successfully transitioned to a focus on medical products when computer assembly moved overseas. Mack molding is also unique, since it is still privately owned.

KENDALL!!!!!!