Data Dealer

Bill Pardue is well-versed in organizing copious amounts of information.
Now the 54-year-old faces an even bigger challenge: starting a business.

Dayton Daily News

by Jim Dillon

DAYTON — FOR NEARLY ALL OF HIS ADULT life, Bill Pardue has dealt with data. So, it is no surprise that Pardue again is running a company that manages information.

Having served as president and chief executive of U.S. Corporate and Federal Markets division of LexisNexis, the large legal and business news information provider based in Miami Twp., and working as president of Gartner Intelligence, a division of information market research firm Gartner Inc., Pardue is well acquainted with earning a living by using technology to cull vital information from vast amounts of data.

What’s different this time is that Pardue and his partners are building a data management business from scratch without the resources and safety nets typically provided by a large corporation. In other words, Pardue has become an entrepreneur at age 54, something he calls “the most challenging thing I have ever done.”

“I have been associated mostly with starting new operations within large companies or turning around troubled businesses,” Pardue said. “I have never started a business on my own. The challenges are just as great,” if not greater.

Pardue’s new title is chief executive and co-founder of Qbase LLC, the wholly owned American arm of Qbase Data Services Ltd., a British data management firm founded in 1990.

Pardue owns the new business along with his wife, Janet, and three former LexisNexis colleagues: Beverly Parker, Chuck Backus and Paul Kesaris. Qbase LLC’s other current employees all own equity in the company.

Qbase’s new headquarters are under construction at the Acropolis office complex in Beavercreek. It also has an office in Washington.

Like its British counterpart, Qbase LLC specializes in taking data gathered by other organizations and putting it to good use for those groups. Pardue’s company currently focuses on helping nonprofit outfits and colleges and universities with their fundraising by using technology and “predictive modeling” to identify prospective donors.

In essence, Qbase LLC provides answers to questions about people who might donate money to an organization, Pardue said. By gathering and reviewing an organization’s data in several ways, the company can identify who is most likely to donate, when are they most likely to do so, and how they are most likely to do give.

Qbase then helps its clients develop “action programs” the organizations can use take advantage of the discoveries made by the company.

Qbase LLC currently has seven clients. Pardue said the number of clients isn’t as important as the company’s ongoing relationship with each client. With fewer clients, “you get to know the customers better,” Pardue said. “It is a more intimate relationship. They’ve invested more in your business, and we’re going to be able to pay more attention to them.”

Pardue declined to reveal the company’s projected revenues, but he anticipates the company will create more than 100 jobs in information technology sales, marketing and administration in Ohio within the next three years.

The road to entrepreneurship for Pardue started last winter on the East Coast, where he lived. Pardue had completed a “turnaround” job for a large corporation and decided to give retirement a try.

It didn’t work. He was miserable. “My wife told me, ‘Just because you can retire doesn’t mean you should,’ ” Pardue said.

He soon received a call from Backus, who along with several other software engineers wanted to form a new company. They wondered whether Pardue wanted to be its CEO.

While remaining in contact with Backus’s group, Pardue and his wife explored buying a going business. They had identified three potential companies: one in Texas, one in California and one in New York. But things took a unusual turn after the Pardues and their daughter took a trip to Belize in early April.

While on their jungle expedition, the Pardues met Ian and Anita Johnstone, the owners of Qbase Data Services, based in Warrington, England. The Pardues liked what they learned about Qbase.

The following month, Pardue , Kesaris and Parker met with Ian Johnstone in New York. That meeting led to more discussions among the group, and by September, the group had decided to form Qbase LLC in Washington.

That’s when the Dayton Development Coalition and local congressmen Mike DeWine and David Hobson convinced Pardue and his partners to locate the business in the Dayton area and help build the region’s information technology industry.

“The technology team got what they wanted, which was to create something new,” Pardue said. “They wanted to serve interesting markets with solutions nobody else was producing. The British company got what it wanted, which was to have a U.S. operation wholly owned by U.S. citizens. And my family and I got what we wanted, which was to stay in Dayton, Ohio.”

Qbase LLC soon opened for business in the apartment above the garage of Pardue’s Kettering home. In its fifth week of business, the company landed its first contract for $172,000. But the work had to be completed in 60 days.

“It was enormously exciting,” Pardue said. “It has made a very positive difference in our financial picture.”

The company has added six more clients since then, and late this month will move into its 7,200-square-foot headquarters at the Acropolis. Meanwhile, Pardue has been conferring with local business leaders and veteran entrepreneurs, seeking advice and ideas on how to make Qbase LLC grow and thrive.

Pardue said it has been an accelerated education for him, but it needed to be.

“The opportunities were greater than we thought, and we were able to move more quickly than we expected.”

Contact Jim Dillon at 225-7311.