TiTi McNeill came to this country from South Vietnam in April 1975, when that country fell under Communist control. She left behind her parents and six brothers and sisters. With her little sister in tow and $10 in her pocket, she came looking for opportunity.
Day one: Someone stole that ten bucks. Seriously.
Undaunted, she soon found work as a keypunch operator in suburban Virginia.
A few years later she switched to a job at a large software engineering company, then started taking night classes in data processing at Northern Virginia Community College. In 1979, her employer promoted her to a junior computer programmer position, at a starting salary of $5.25 per hour. She continued going to school part- time at night, and after 10 years earned a masters degree from American University in Washington.
By 1987 she had set up shop as an independent software consultant, and two years later she incorporated as TranTech, a firm providing high-end IT consulting services in areas ranging from Oracle database design and development to local- and wide-area net- work management. In 1994 she got her first $25,000 line of credit from George Mason Bank (now United Bank) using her personal deposits as collateral.
With drive like hers, it was perhaps inevitable that McNeill would get bitten by the entrepreneurial bug. "When I was an employee for other companies I would stay there late any- way, and one day it hit me. If I don't go home, and I work this hard, I might as well do it for myself,'' she says. In the early days, it was "day and night, day and night. I would work as an Oracle consultant during the day, and so the only time I had was at night. That is what is takes: You work until 2 o'clock in the morning every night." Those who have seen her in action are staggered by her sheer stamina.
"She is not just a 12-hour person but 14 or 16 hours a day, and not just six days a week but seven days, and not just for a couple of years but over the period of a decade. It is just phenomenal how many hours she has personally devoted to making her firm a success,'' he says.
McNeill won't take all the credit, however. With 150 people in her employ, she insists that the success of her firm is as much due to their collective efforts as to her individual drive. "The success here is a concert made up of people - clients, business partners and especially employees," she says. "You have to take care of your employees.
If you are lucky enough to get a good person to work for you, and you want to retain their talents, you have to provide an environment where they can grow and learn. That means, first, an atmosphere of professionalism and respect. Then you provide training, and you give them a good benefits package. You have to be competitive in those things or else people will leave you to work for someone else who can offer one more thing above what you do. And then you give a good bonus, you share your success with all your key personnel in recognition of their contributions and their commitment."
Do all that, and you are still only half way home, however.
In McNeill's view, it still is the personal force of the entrepreneur's will that ties it all together and makes it sing. "It takes commitment, it takes passion, it takes devotion. You have to have all of that,'' she says.
