Spring 2002

Carolina Entrepreneur
Alumni Profile: Tim Gupton, BSBA '72

Tim Gupton has a lot on his plate.

As a CPA with Hughes, Pittman & Gupton, L.L.P., his practice focuses primarily on the Triangle's burgeoning entrepreneurial community, from owner-managed businesses to investor-financed technology companies.

But he is involved with a few other companies, too.

He is a founder and general partner of Research Triangle Ventures.

He is a founder and president of Research Triangle Family Office, L.L.C. He is a director of Ardent Pharmaceuticals Inc.

He is a co-founder and startup chief financial officer for Alphavax Inc. and CropSolution Inc.

He was also a co-founder and startup chief financial officer for Cogent Neuroscience Inc. and SARCO Inc., and he served as startup chief financial officer for Inspire Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Trimeris Inc.

"I wear a number of hats," said Gupton, a 1972 graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill. "But you learn leverage in the Big Five firms. You learn how to juggle a lot of different problems in a public accounting firm setting. All those skills I developed over the years are useful to me and allow me to leverage and to guide and to execute more efficiently with the help of other people."

Gupton, a native North Carolinian, worked in Florida for 19 years with KPMG. During his last few years with the company, Gupton managed the audit practice, where he says he got a hint of what went into running a business.

"That was interesting to me," said Gupton. "Building a business. Maintaining a business."

In 1992, he returned to North Carolina and joined the accounting firm run by Kent Pittman and Gupton's brother-in-law, Dan Hughes.

"The Triangle had matured," said Gupton. "The reasons I didn't stay here, the reverse of that was the reason why I was attracted back here. There was a huge difference between 1972 to 1992 in the Triangle. It was now an exciting place with a lot of prospects and opportunity."

Gupton has taken advantage of those prospects and opportunities, becoming a business leader to whom startups and budding entrepreneurs turn when taking the critical steps in developing their businesses.

"I enjoy helping them build a company," said Gupton. "One of my strengths and weaknesses is that I take on other people's problems too much. So their burdens become my burdens and their desires become my desires, and I get vested in helping them."

According to Gupton, the most difficult thing about helping startups is building a management team and executing business milestones within a reasonable period of time.

"Ultimately, the most difficult thing for technology startups is the inevitable transition of management from the founder to more experienced management teams," Gupton said.

Gupton's first real moment of satisfaction as an entrepreneur came with the success of Trimeris' AIDS drug, and the company subsequently going public. The association with a company that both created a product that could significantly impact the world and succeeded financially validated his involvement in entrepreneurship.

But it is the relationships he has developed with the founders of the companies that have instilled Gupton with a lasting love of entrepreneurship.

"It's just rewarding to be a partner with some of these people," said Gupton. "That's what makes life interesting and fun."

With Research Triangle Ventures Inc., Gupton and his partners are teaming with more Triangle startups. In June, they closed the fund at $10 million, and they have made three investments - Entrinsik Inc., LiveWire Logic Inc. and OpenMind Publishing Group.

"They're all three technology companies," said Gupton. "All three address large markets and have unique solutions to the problems in those markets. One is a paradigm shift; the other two are better mousetraps."

Evaluating the viability of life science- and technology-based companies may seem like a daunting challenge for most business school graduates. While he usually brings aboard a consultant or a team member with substantial knowledge of the technology or science, Gupton says using basic business skills to turn science into a product is the key to success.

"The training you get in public accounting allows you to move between industries faster than you might otherwise have," said Gupton. "Those skills that you get help you quickly hone in on the fundamentals of the business.

That helps me as a venture capitalist." Gupton recommends that people with an entrepreneurial spirit get corporate experience to see what it is like to be part of a successful business.

"Then you can embark on your entrepreneurial dream," said Gupton. "And pick the right advisers when you are starting a company - principally, accountants and lawyers who will help you develop your business plan and open the door to venture investors."

With an environment nurtured by the Council for Entrepreneurial Development and a well-networked community, Gupton believes there is a low barrier to knowledge in starting a venture-backed business in the Triangle.

Gupton says UNC-Chapel Hill has the leadership and mindset and is positioned to capitalize on its technology. And he sees education at and the research activities of the Triangle's three major universities as providing the raw material for new companies and the solutions to the problems of the future.

"When I think about my own children as they go off to college, I advise them to go somewhere where you learn to learn and where your view of the world is broadened," said Gupton. "UNC-Chapel Hill did that for me. It took a kid from a small tobacco and textile town and opened up possibilities of doing something beyond what I envisioned when I went there originally. That's what education is all about."

Reprinted with permission of the Carolina Entrepreneur