After completing a degree in chemical engineering and working for six years in industry, David Perry went to Harvard Business School with the goal of being involved with or launching his own high-technology start-up company. “If you can get people who understand technology and people who understand business and put them together so that they communicate with each other effectively, you've got something extraordinarily powerful,” says Perry.

He has taken the business plan that earned him runner-up honours in the inaugural contest for Harvard Business School and put it to the test — starting his own company. In 1997 he co-founded Chemdex.com, where he is now the chief executive officer. The company uses e-commerce technology on the Internet to improve the process of finding and buying life-science products for researchers.

According to Perry, communication is often the most difficult part about launching a start-up. Often technologists cannot explain what they are doing or the business people cannot grasp the technology. Although Perry hates to pretend that he is an expert, he says: “I did it once and it worked; I'm not sure how much was luck and how much was skill.” He does stand by some principles that he used in developing Chemdex.com. One is to get as many people's opinions as you possibly can. “Sometimes you learn something, sometimes you don't, but it allows you to refine your business plan as you go. People think of things you haven't thought of or will ask you questions you have to figure out the answers to. In the end, you can either convince people you have a good plan or you can't,” says Perry.

He adds that, in organizing a company, you want to hire people who are better than you in every category. “If I don't hire someone who's better than me as a chief financial officer or vice-president of sales or marketing, then I'm not doing my job.” The only way to do this, however, is to have enough working knowledge of those areas to tell good from bad, he says. Make sure that you use your skills. If you're really good with technology, make sure you find people who are good at the other things. The fault he sees most often is that technical people go into business and hire other technical people but undervalue financial or management skills. “It's very hard to grow a business unless you have other people who can do those things well,” says Perry. See Wisdom on the Web