Olaf Growald
Ab DeWeese did something most of us only dream about. He left his job, built a company, found a management team to run it, and walked away at age 37 to free up his time and pursue other interests. Now 39, DeWeese still serves as owner and chairman of GOOD Automation, a 10-person, Irving-based testing company for medical devices, aerospace, semiconductors, and oil and gas. But he says he does little work for the company. He fills his days as an investor with Fort Worth’s Cowtown Angels group, startup mentor; volunteer with Fort Worth’s Entrepreneur’s Organization; part-time chief information security officer for GuardMax, a company with a simple software solution for managing security guards; and part-time chief information officer of Kwivik Medical Group, which makes an emergency oxygen device. DeWeese, a physicist from a small town in Mississippi, has lofty goals — to become the Henry Ford of the medical device industry.
Gap in the Marketplace “When I got the entrepreneurial bug, I took a business model that I really understood and saw there’s kind of a gap in the marketplace where no one was operating in Dallas. I could focus on a medical device market vertical because I knew the inside secrets.”
Competing “When we started GOOD Automation in 2013, we came into a mature industry. A lot of companies do what we do. But you get out there and hustle and market and sell and solve problems. You build up a good personal reputation. You win a contract here, win a contract there. We beat out a Goliath in one case. It was being hungry, it was being smart, it was having a good solution and it was having the ability to execute, which was all about speed and quality. I networked my way in.”
Differentiator “So, the word validation tends to show up a lot in FDA land. It’s very nuanced and complex, but it’s driven by specific regulatory requirements. We’re big nerds for the FDA regulatory space. In the aerospace and defense world, they care about the same things, but they don’t call them by the same names. They have the same types of activities to demonstrate that your test set is correctly set up and ready for use. We speak both languages. It’s a differentiator for us.”
15-Year Plan “I started GOOD Automation with a 15-year plan. I am going to be the Henry Ford of the medical device industry. Ford didn’t invent the car; he invented the assembly line. He brought them to market faster than anyone imagined was possible. In the first five years, I started up a company to give me financial independence and run on its own. Now, in my second five years, I am learning early-stage equity investing and capital formation. In my third five years, I will take a novel medical device to market.”
Getting Time Back “I left my company in 2017 because I wanted to get my time back. The secret to leaving was deciding what was enough. Happiness equals dividing what you have with what you want. For my family, I decided what enough kind of looked like. So, I was able to set up a company that provided that and walk away. Rather than focus on growth, I focused on quality and a good management team. With this certainty, I was able to get all my time back and go pursue other things.”