Pam Marrone, 50
Then: Founder of Entotech, a natural-pesticide maker later sold to health-care giant Abbott Laboratories; founder/CEO of AgraQuest, a private producer of organically certified fungicides with 2006 revenues of $20 million
Now: Founder/CEO of Marrone Organic Innovations, which designs and commercializes organically certified weed-killers
When the dust settled after Marrone's failed attempt to take her 10-year-old company, AgraQuest, public, she realized that her new investors' ideas on direction didn't fully jibe with hers. (Because the initial public offering had fallen apart about a month before September 11, investors were skittish and Marrone had to raise money on less favorable terms than in previous rounds of financing.) "I was much more interested in getting back to the discovery and innovation side of things, rather than focusing just on revenue maximization," she says. So Marrone bailed. She started a new company, Marrone Organic Innovations, and took care to get the company's values down on paper. Today, every new investor and employee is required to sign a comprehensive statement of mission, vision, and values.
Her advice for would-be entrepreneurs: Remember that "money is not just money," Marrone says, and that the relationship between your company and your investors is like a marriage. "They have to have compatible chemistry and they have to share your values," she says. "You need to be able to walk away from a bad deal," she says, so raise money even when you don't think you need it.
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