Dream Weaver Patterns Career from Ideals

Industry Leaders: Donald Dick

Now here's an unusual career path: from physics to electrical engineering to biometric engineering to ... payment processing. But Donald Dick isn't afraid to be different. "People above you make the decisions, but I always did stand up (against) things that were wrong, sometimes to my detriment," he says. "I always try to do the right thing and create value for customers. I'm a dreamer and an idealist."

Born and raised in Little Rock, Ark., Dick spent his teen-age years with his family in Wisconsin. His father was a chemical engineer and instilled a strong work ethic in Don. As a ham radio operator in high school, Don got interested in electrical engineering, but when he entered Cal Institute of Technology in the '60s he opted for what was considered the glamour degree at the time - physics.

"It took me about a week to figure out I wasn't meant to be a physicist," Dick says.

He graduated in 1964 with a B.S. in electrical engineering from Caltech. He went off to the University of Wisconsin, where he received not only a master's but also a Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1968.

Armed with his sheepskins, Dick entered the world of academia. From 1970 to 1973, he was known as Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering as well as Assistant Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Colorado.

"During graduate school, I wanted to get into biometric engineering," he says. "I minored in physiology and worked on computer simulation through cardiovascular systems. At the university I continued to do simulation work and got into signal processing work, electrocardiogram monitoring."

One of Dick's students had landed a job in medical ultrasound at a Denver-based corporation called UNIRAD. That same student talked Dick into leaving the university and entering the world of developing hardware for ultrasound exams with emphasis on cardiovascular systems.

While employed as Section Head in research and development for two years, Dick watched as UNIRAD experienced dramatic growth followed by dramatic contractions. Ultimately, Dick found himself in need of a job. After doing independent consulting for six months, Dick headed back to teaching. From 1976 to 1978, Dick not only taught at the University of Colorado Medical Center in Denver but also worked as a research associate in signal processing. "Different things were happening in the medical industry," Dick says. "I wanted to go back into biometrics."

His dream was to take his knowledge and expertise and use it to help the medical community. In February 1978, he did just that. Involved with the creation of Life Imaging Corp. in Boulder, Colo., Dick participated in the development of ultrasonic breast scanners and created an image-storage system with dynamic replay of scans to detect breast cancer.

From design engineer, Dick branched out into marketing services manager for Life Imaging. "I wasn't a pure enough nerd to just want to work with computer programs," Dick says. "I liked working with people and was more interested in the application of the technology."

Dick conducted clinical trials, managed marketing activities such as trade shows and professional educational seminars, and oversaw material preparation. But when a dream was realized, there always was another to pursue.

Life Imaging took its toll on Dick, especially the travel. After 17 years in the medical arena and five established patents for cardiograph and ultrascan technology, Dick decided to try something different. That something was ultrasound technology for mineral processing.

Wait a minute ... mineral processing? "Electrons can't tell the difference, and I was interested in application," Dick says. "Ultrasound technology is part of mining. Mining gets rocks out of the ground and mineral processing gets minerals out of the rock."

In March 1981, Dick joined Armco Autometrics in Boulder and for the next three years directed its engineering department in new product definition, field testing and marketing. He was instrumental in major upgrades for its particle-size monitors as well as the development of an X-ray elemental analyzer.

He started traveling extensively on an international basis, running projects in several developing countries. And once again, travel ended another dream.

"Excessive travel made me leave Armco," Dick says. "All mines were overseas. I was spending lots of time in South America and Yugoslavia. I was single, and it was hard to maintain friendships and develop relationships."

Switching fields once again, Dick opted for optics. In 1988, Dick accepted an applications engineering directorship with Soricon Corp., which specialized in optical character recognition technology utilizing a variety of techniques, including barcode and zip code reading. Applications include postal industry and point-of-sale processing. An acquisition by Soricon of a company that had an optical check reader brought Dick into yet another space that would benefit from his engineering background - check verification. Dick had another dream. "The reader read checks just fine, but it wasn't enough," Dick says. "It needed software for check verification."

That decision led Dick and another engineer, Bob Anderson, to leave Soricon and start their own firm.

In November 1991, Rocky Mountain Retail Systems was born. As President and co-founder of this Boulder company, Dick was committed to developing check-verification software. Initially selling verification software to collection agencies, RMRS branched out and, in 1995, introduced NCIS - a national check verification system.

"In my experience, products fail for other reasons than technological," Dick says. "They're usually business or marketing reasons. As somewhat of a nerd, it is always difficult to handle the all the marketing and sales aspects, particularly when we started on a shoestring."

And what a shoestring it was. With only a $25,000 initial investment, Dick and Anderson made the conscious decision to start out small.

"Bob and I had been involved with companies during the dot.com storm where you get money, spend more than you have and build products on the assumption that thousands are going to be sold," Dick says. "We decided to do a checkbook company. If we didn't have the money, we wouldn't do it."

According to Dick, with a small initial investment and no subsequent funding, the disadvantage of that philosophy was that the company grew slowly. The advantage was that they slept at night.

Notwithstanding, RMRS did get built. All the bills got paid. The operations were managed carefully yet successfully. A solid structure was formed with only eight employees. "We did all the work," Dick says. "You do everything from the books to cleaning the bathroom."

Dick also maintained extensive contacts with major customers like Visa and regulatory entities like NACHA. He also negotiated the sale of RMRS in January 2000 to Electronic Clearing House, Inc. and continued in his original management position until 2001, when he decided to take a break from the corporate arena.

Does Dick have any regrets? Not really. "We made our share of mistakes," Dick says. "Probably the one that limited us the most was our conservative business practice. We would have liked a quicker growth and a more dominant position. We were there with the technology but not enough coverage."

Dick continues, "We had the drive and great technology. We had great ideas and wanted to see it work. Money was not the motivating factor. Seeing the technology accepted and utilized was the goal. One of things we did right was follow the philosophy to pick whatever you want to do and do it, but don't try to be all things for all people. We only did verification, we didn't do credit cards or debit cards. We never developed an ACH engine. We just did one thing and did it well." Dick sees the whole payment industry in a state of flux with different modalities competing against each other - credit card versus cash versus checks.

"I think checks will continue to increase," Dick says. "This whole time people were predicting they were gone. It just didn't happen. I believe electronic check solutions will continue to grow dramatically. Any solution that eliminates the flow of paper will gain ascendancy. People may use checks to initiate, but the electronic process is what will work."

Dick believes the biggest problems may lie in the initiation of the transaction because consumers still want to use checks. He sees a hybrid of paper and plastic, and electronics may wind up being the ways things will shake out. From experience, Dick knows check readers can't read right all the time. Conversion may provide the answer.

And Dick is optimistic about the process. "One of the nice parts about our industry is that we try things and not just once," Dick says. "Several things are being tried in parallel, and hopefully we'll find the best one that works. We have the luxury to experiment with different programs."

Dick also believes that at some point standardization will come into play, but not yet. "If it's done too early, it will restrict reactivity," he says. "If it is done too late, people will pursue incompatible systems and there won't be widespread efficiency."

What would Dick change to ensure efficiency? "I don't have a quick answer," he says. "My gut feeling is more cooperation between competitors, some degree of standardization and people agreeing on information."

What's next for Don Dick? At the moment, he has no immediate plans. "At some point I may try volunteer work, executive exchange with underdeveloped countries," he says. "My long-term goal is to try to give something back. Having worked in those countries, I would really like to be able to help those people. I never said I was realistic."