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Mondale Becomes Seller of Efficiency
Mike Kaszuba,
Minneapolis Star Tribune - Published January 02, 2005
Just down the street from his most recent creation, Minnesota's first light-rail line, Ted Mondale is heading a new project that is already turning heads and might make him rich.
Representing his new company, Nazca Solutions, the former Metropolitan Council chairman turned CEO is busy trying to persuade counties and even school districts to buy what is being billed as a revolutionary computer software product that makes it easier to obtain data on property records.
Hennepin County was an enthusiastic buyer, giving Mondale's company a $550,000 contract in October. Wright County signed on, too. Pat Sawatzke, chairman of the County Board, said Mondale informed him at a trade show last month that Wright County had already signed a contract paying the company $95,000 in the first year.
To those who know him, Mondale's latest reincarnation is not a surprise.
Even when he was Met Council chairman, a government job that was technically part-time, he helped operate several small companies and jetted to Asia several times a year on private business.
Even Mondale's political adversaries are giving his company early praise.
"This will also provide much better customer service," said Penny Steele, a Hennepin County commissioner and Republican who acknowledged that she has rarely seen eye-to-eye with Mondale politically. "It saves time."
Michael Cunniff, the Hennepin County recorder, agreed. "When you refinance your home and when you're buying a piece of property, it should help appraisers do a faster job," he said. "It should just overall help speed up the general commerce of real estate."
So far, Nazca Solutions has signed contracts with six counties in Minnesota and two in Wisconsin. Within a year, Mondale said, he hopes to have contracts with two dozen Minnesota counties.
Perhaps more important, Nazca is nearing a contract with the business arm of the Wisconsin Counties Association, which represents the state's 72 counties, and already has business ties with the Minnesota Counties Computer Cooperative, a quasi-governmental agency that helps Minnesota's 87 counties select computer vendors.
Mark O'Connell, the Wisconsin Counties Association's executive director, said Nazca could be doing business with the "vast majority" of the state's counties in four years. While Mondale's name didn't hurt, O'Connell said, the company is succeeding on its merits. "We're very, very careful to be nonpartisan," he said.
"Boy, that'd be great," Mondale said, responding to whether Nazca Solutions has the potential to make him a rich man. "But we're going to lose $1 million this year."
Mondale, however, acknowledged that "right now, we've got a very successful product," and said the company hopes to expand nationally.
Despite the company's promise, Mondale said, he has not ruled out seeking political office again. He was a DFL state senator from St. Louis Park in the 1990s and made an unsuccessful bid for the party's endorsement for governor in 1998.
His new office, in Minneapolis' Warehouse District, includes an early Democratic campaign poster for his father, former Vice President Walter Mondale, a model of a light-rail train and -- in a nod to his former boss -- a Jesse Ventura action figure.
But this, said Mondale, is business, not politics.
"I've not had anyone say, 'I'm going to buy your product because I like your politics,' " he said. "We're not going to every county [and saying], 'Hi there, I met you at the DFL Club ten years ago.' "
That might be difficult in places such as Stearns County, where President Bush captured 55 percent of the vote in the November election. But county officials said Mondale transcended that, leading the county to sign a contract that pays the company $131,000 in the first year.
"He comes into a county and makes a pitch. He gets the attention of people right away," said Randy Schreifels, the county auditor.
Schreifels was an early convert to the software, and said he believes that Mondale will do well financially. Stearns County, he said, has an interest in having the company succeed so that others will sign contracts and a "regional portal" involving surrounding counties can be created using the software. "We've been trying to get the word out," he said.
In some counties, though, just being Ted Mondale is itself enough to turn heads.
"He looks just like his father," said Kay Mack, the Beltrami County auditor, in recalling Mondale's visit. The county signed a contract that pays $44,500 to the company in the first year, and $14,400 per year afterward.
"I knew he used to travel to Japan" on private business, said Jules Smith, a longtime Met Council member. "Ted is a real doer."
Smith said Mondale's private business never conflicted with his Met Council duties. But he said he remembered that at Mondale's farewell party a business associate said he was "glad to have Ted back" in the private sector.
In simple terms, the software allows computer users to obtain an assortment of county data -- ranging from property maps to tax records -- that until now required users to deal separately with a variety of county departments. Often, the data can only be obtained by physically going to a county's offices.
Although officials of several counties said they had tried internally to create the software, they had not succeeded because of time and budget constraints.
With the Nazca software, workers at property-title companies "can do a lot of this stuff [now] from their own offices ... plus, we don't have to help them," said Larry Unger, Wright County's recorder and registrar.
Jason Hepp, Nazca Solutions' president, said Mondale is a "good visionary" and fundraiser for the company. "Early on, Ted and I were the ones who kept the doors open with our own money," he said.
"I don't view what we do as political at all," Hepp added. "He's a Democrat. I happen to be a Republican. It's not a political sale."
For more information, contact: Jason Hepp, jhepp@nazcainc.com (612-279-6104) at Nazca |
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THE NAZCA LINES
Two thousand years ago, the Nazca Indians of Peru created a series of mystifying etchings in the desert which can only be fully appreciated from an aircraft.
The same visionary thinking inspires Nazca Solutions to see opportunities in information brokering which others miss. |
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