Negocios Now

www.negociosnow.com Febrero 2021 21 NegociosNow NegociosNow By David Steinkraus I t was his second career that bought Tony Jimenez the most success. As the founder, president, and CEO of Micro- Tech in Tysons, Virginia, he over- sees a small business with a large impact on the federal govern- ment's information technology infrastructure. He didn't set out to do that. He set out to be in law enforcement. After high school he chose to enlist in the Army because it offered him the fastest route into military police training. "I served my three years and could not wait to get out," he says. He went back a few years later because of an offer to fly heli- copters. That didn't work out, but because of his hard work in college classes, he received an Army scholarship to finish his bachelor's degree as a member of the Reserve Officer Training Corps. "After you have served in your military basic branch — wheth- er infantry or military police or whatever — they look at ways to maximize your development and give you additional train- ing and capabilities," Jimenez said. At the time, the Army's Acqui- sition Corps was starting up. It handles all of the purchas- ing, management, and program management for the service. There are subdivisions for IT, program development, and con- tracting. Jimenez was invited to join, and the Army also paid for his master's degrees, one in program management, and the other in IT. When Jimenez retired as a lieutenant colonel in 2003, he received dozens of good offers from private compa- nies eager to use his skills and experience. He chose one company, but six months lat- er he received a Federal 100 Award. These awards are pre- sented annually to the 100 people or companies who helped improve government IT. (He's won the award twice at MicroTech.) People advised him to use the prestige asso- ciated with the award to start his own business, he said. In 2004, he founded MicroTech. MicroTech focuses on inte- grating new technology into fed- eral government technology sys- tems. IT equipment and software become obsolete quickly, but the sprawling and complex federal systems cannot be shut down while they're upgraded, Jimenez said. Instead, companies like his integrate new technology to federal IT systems while they're operating. Yet translating his extensive government experience into a successful business career was not automatic. What he didn't understand, he said, was all the things that could go wrong. From inside the government everything appears well man- aged, and that can lead to the notion that success will follow from completing the proper steps in the proper order. "I think, honestly, I was naive," Jimenez said. "I had no idea of the challenges of getting capi- tal. I had no idea of the chal- lenge of getting credibility." A government salary didn't provide the savings necessary to ensure MicroTech's success, he said. So Jimenez sold 40% of the business to investors. He later bought them out, but without that initial investment, he said, he would not have been as suc- cessful. At one point, MicroTech grew to 650 people, and Jimenez realized it was too big. He sold some assets, paid off some debts, reinvested and refocused. The staff shrank to about 50 people. Because of the sharpened focus, MicroTech can grow for a decade and can become a billion-dollar com- pany without any new acquisi- tions, Jimenez said. In its 17 years in business, he said, the company has done a little more than $2.5 billion in business. Last year he was named alumnus of the year at Webster University where he earned his IT master's degree. When he took classes there, he said, he was the only person of color in his class. There was one wom- an. "It's pretty cool to be in a field that Latinos are not prev- alent in," Jimenez said. "What I have found, in my very long career, is there are a lot of people out there who, unfor- tunately, don't want to see the kind of success that many minorities have had and wom- en have had." When you're successful, you receive a lot of scrutiny, he said. "But the good news is we just keep doing what we're doing, and we keep moving on, and we've had success, and we'll continue to have suc- cess." Latino makes his mark in government IT "I had no idea of the challenges of getting capital. I had no idea of the challenge of getting credibility."

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