A True Serial Entrepreneur: John Greathouse Shares Setbacks and Successes of Building Multiple Companies from Zero to Over $100 Million in Revenue

A True Serial Entrepreneur: John Greathouse Shares Setbacks and Successes of Building Multiple Companies from Zero to Over 0 Million in Revenue

John Greathouse grew up in a military family that moved often. He attended the University of Maryland and received a degree in accounting; he knew from the beginning that he did not want to be an accountant, but realized that learning how to read and understand financial statements is a critical aspect of business. “If you don’t know how to do that, it’s like trying to do business in a foreign country without knowing the language. You always have to ask others if something sounds or looks right.” After graduating and earning his CPA, he spent three years with an accounting firm working closely with smaller companies and their founders.

Certain that he did not want to be an accountant, John attended the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School for his MBA. Instead of finding an entrepreneurial company, he took a role as part of an audit group at Arthur Andersen. One of his main functions was consulting, speaking to owners and founders about improvements they could make with their companies. Observing the mistakes made by other companies-combined with his business education-has helped John become successful in his own start-up ventures.

Since his time at Arthur Andersen, John has been involved in over four ventures. He worked forComputer Motion, a robotics company, that came to his attention through a call from a lawyer he had previously worked with. “Take every opportunity you can to network. You never know where it is going to go.” At the time, Computer Motion consisted of just a small team of engineers, with no jobs available. After speaking with the founder, John arranged to join the team for no pay, which turned into a nearly eight-year position with the company. Computer Motion’s goal was to make medical robotic surgery available so that patients could walk out of the hospital within a day of major surgery. When he first became involved in 1993, this was a relatively unheard-of idea, which has changed the face of medicine; robotic surgery is now used in heart and brain surgery. Even with such revolutionary ideas, the company was always poorly funded; as the CFO and head of business development, he constantly tried to raise money to keep the company afloat. He attributes the company’s mistakes to a lack of experience; all Computer Motion employees were new to entrepreneurial business and none had senior-executive experience. Even with their rough patches, Computer Motion went from zero revenue to a merger with Intuitive Surgical Inc., another medical robotics company, for 8 million.

In common with all successful entrepreneurs, John took the lessons learned from Computer Motion to his next venture. His belief in networking again became apparent through his involvement in a company called Expertcity. While speaking at a local conference, one he was not initially enthusiastic about, he heard another speaker, the founder of the

Robotic surgery on the cutting edge.(Gynecologic Surgery): An article from: OB GYN News

Robotic surgery on the cutting edge.(Gynecologic Surgery): An article from: OB GYN News

This digital document is an article from OB GYN News, published by Thomson Gale on May 1, 2006. The length of the article is 1519 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Title: Robotic surgery on the cutting edge.(Gynecologic Surgery)
Author: Betsy Bates
Publication: OB GYN New

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