7/30/2019 BTN November Cover
1/3
PROFILE
Wit, Wisdomand CapitalComputer pioneer Bill Fisher oersadvice, cash and sometimes tough loveto ntech startups in the Midwest
By Sean Sposito
Sitting on the edge of a black leather chair, Bill Fisher oscillates slowly back and
forth like a portable fan. Hes in a conference room in the squat Omaha o ce
building where in any given month he makes hundreds of thousands of dollars
worth of investment decisions aecting hopeful nancial technoloy startups,
and hes pondering a question about how he arrives at those decisions.
The swiveling suddenly stops. He puts his hands under his thighs, nally resigning him-
self, it seems, to say what he was thinking.
Ill get someone who shows up, and they want to raise $200,000. And this is going to be
the deal: They have no money in it, and they cant put any money in it, he says, disparag-ingly. I dont have any room for a guy like that.
You have heard of the Oracle of Omaha. Well, Fisher, the founder of Treetop Ventures, a
consulting and investment rm, is the patriarch of the citys burgeoning tech scene.
Fisher, in his mid-60s, is an unlikely kingmaker in this city known more for thick steaks
than high stakes.
At 5 foot 7 inches, he often jokes about his height. Hes nearly bald, but still makes regular
visits to his longtime barber, who now rents a chair in a womans nail salon, to trim up the
sides and his beard.
And even though he predates desktop computers by decades, energetic entrepreneurs
young enough to be his grandchildren seek him out as much for his wisdom as his wallet.
He is almost a required stop for early-stage companies, says Danny Schreiber, a found-
ing editor of Silicon Prairie News, a blog that covers the region. People want to go and speak
with Bill Fisher.
BILL FISHER
I
:
16 Bank Technology news | novemBer 2012 banktechnews.com
016_BTNNov12 1 10/24/2012 3:53:22 PM
7/30/2019 BTN November Cover
2/3
OMAHA BECKONSOmaha is a perfect place for processors and pay-
ments technoloy companies.
The underpinnings of the citys tech scene go back
to the 1950s, when the Strategic Air Command was
relocated south of the city at the Outt Air Force base.
With it, the Air Force brought the infrastructure that
eventually attracted technoloy specialists, including
Fisher himself.The talent bolstered local tech companies in the
50s and 60s, including then-Omaha based payment
processor First Data and transaction software com-
pany ACI.
And it created a runway for current companies
that now operate in the area, such as eBays e-com-
merce arm PayPal.
Despite this rich history, ntech startups only
began appearing in Omaha roughly two years ago,
says Dusty Reynolds, the Greater Omaha Chamber
of Commerces director of entrepreneurship and
innovation. Around the same time, investors began
appearing.Currently there are several venture capital rms
investing in companies in the city, and at least one
angel investment group, says Reynolds. They include
Je Skolls Capricorn Investment Group, which plans
to open an o ce in Omaha later this year, according
to reports. Skoll, a billionaire, is eBays rst employee
and its former president.
Midwestern modesty is one reason why Omaha
has been largely under the radar compared to other
tech hotbeds on either coast. Ask a rancher how
many cattle he has, says Reynolds. Hell knock you
out.
Theres a saying that Fisher and his di sciples arefond of: Big Hat, No Cattle. In Omaha, you hate fail-
ing, but you dont aunt your success.
That makes his company called Treetop,
because thats the word his sharecropper father
would use to describe a cup lled to the brim with ice
cream hard to peg down.
If you ask Fisher, hell tell you hes an angel
investor. He doesnt invest enough for control of a
company, and he typically brings other investors in
with him. There are about 70 active angels that follow
his lead.
Treetops o ce half incubator, half shared o ce
space is lled with small companies that are inter-
linked. Some Fisher has invested in. Others provide
services to the companies he invests in.
There are personal nancial management soft-
ware company Lodo Software; subprime auto lender
Prairie Finance; independent sales organization
USMPS, which is run by the oldest of his three sons,
William; and Hatchbox, a Web and graphic design
company that is run by his middle son, Tom.
Fisher invests in other ntech startups that are
not housed inside Treetops o ces.
I would actually categorize him as a friend and
family on steroids, says Craig Page, chief operatingo cer and co-founder of the MeNetwork, one of
Fishers investments that has created a merchant
loyalty smartphone app.
Fisher often continues to take meetings with com-
panies he turns down for an investment.
Roughly a year ago, after exchanging a series of
messages on LinkedIn, he met with Matt Medlock, a
former banker who founded PaySAFE in mid-2011 to
oer Internet escrow services.
Hes the type of guy that will tell you your babys
ugly, Medlock says.
Fisher told Medlock, On a scale of one to ten, you
have a nine idea and a three business model.
Fisher has yet to invest in PaySAFE, but Medlock,
who initially imagined his Omaha company as a
money transmitter like PayPal, changed his model
based on Fishers suggestions. Now PaySAFE focuses
on closing transactions through escrow services.
I had ideas for dierent add-ons, benets for the
service and what it did, he says. After that meeting,
I just took some of these fray benets that the website
and the service would oer and collapsed it down tojust oering an online closing service.
Medlock says the number of PaySAFE customers
is doubling every week. He has ve full-time employ-
ees and an equal number of part-timers. He gives
Fisher some credit for this success.
Fisher meets with so many people, and has his
ngers in so many companies, that keeping track of it
all has become something of a serious hobby for him.
A bomb scare on a plane trip in 1985 got him
started on the detailed record-keeping. The only
thing I could think of is there isnt anyone in my
family that is going to gure out my nancials, he
says. Ever since then I have been religious on keep-ing my life book.
The binder is in a bureau in his palatial home that
abuts a golf course on top of a hill in west Omaha. Its
accompanied by an encrypted DropBox account that
only his family can access through a series of security
questions and a PIN code.
EXERTING CONTROLFishers investments come with conditions.
This is my term sheet: Ill make an investment of
this amount of money for this amount of shares, and
I want a board seat, he says.In addition, if a company thats taking his money
wants to hire a lawyer, it hires his in-house guy at a
discount. If it needs an accountant, it goes to Tree-
tops as well.
Its a shared o ce space, Fisher says. And its
my money. So, if you hire an accountant, and you
hire a lawyer, then you are going to use your money a
hell of a lot faster than if you hire [mine].
His approach, however, hasnt always been free of
failure.
Last year he lost more than $250,000 after a time-
share company that focused on real estate in travel
He is almost arequired stop,
says DannySchreiber, a
founding editorof Silicon PrairieNews, a blog thatcovers the region.
People want togo and speak with
Bill Fisher.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Fisher isadvising and supporting severalFinTech startups, includingLodo Software and MeNetwork.
PartnerTreetop Ventures
STREET CRED: Former CEOof ACI Worldwide and COO ofFirst Data.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 24IMAGE:AlyssaSchukar
banktechnews.com November 2012 | baNk TechNology News 17
017_BTNNov12 2 10/24/2012 3:53:35 PM
7/30/2019 BTN November Cover
3/3
PROFILE
destinations such as the Bahamas folded.
In this case, the trouble was not with the idea, but
with the person running the company.Probably the toughest logic is realizing your CEO,
or your leaders, arent the people for the job, and
then guring out a way to get them to step aside.
They take it personally when I say you are not a for-
ward thinker, or you are not very strategic, he says.
Thats what happened with this company.
Fishers biggest ntech splash might be still to come.
Hes currently working on a $50 million secret proj-
ect with several other investors and banking software
entrepreneurs that would create a private cloud for
the banking industry. Itll target the largest 200 banks.
This is core applications, best of breed, says
Fisher, who smiles slightly and perks upright in hisseat, giving away his excitement about the potential
for this idea. Im 66 years old, Ill be careful about
the next two or three things that Im going to put my
time into. But if I bite o something like that, Ill put
time and eort into it.
TECH ROOTSFisher or Fish, to those who know him initially
gained fame in Omaha for helming one of the citys
largest companies, ACI Worldwide (ACIW). He was
CEO of the payments software giant for roughly a
decade, except for a yearlong interruption, the rstof several would-be retirements that didnt take.
In the fall of 1989, two years after he jumped from
Omaha payment processor First Data to become
ACIs chief operating ocer, he helped organize a
senior management coup that convinced ACIs then
owner, the telecom US West, to sell the company to
Tandem Computers (which is now a unit of Hewlett
Packard).
The deal was completed in 1991, at which time he
became the companys president and chief executive.
Tandem founder Jimmy Treybig oers an anec-
dote about Fishers unique style.
At the close of the Tandem deal, ACI executivesew to the new parents headquarters for a series of
meetings.
At the beer party celebrating the acquisition,
Fisher introduced Tandem to a game popular with
ACI employees. Called bun darts, it involved, hold-
ing a quarter between your buttocks with pants on,
of course and dropping it into a cup.
We were better at it at Tandem than the ACI
people, Treybig says with a big laugh.
Tandem was a temporary stop. Two years later, in
1993, Fisher sank $1 million of his own money into
a management buyout of ACI. The complex deal
included a total of about $5.5 million from ACI execu-
tives, but most of the funding came from investors
backing Transaction Systems Architects the last
private owner of ACI.
The move paid o for Fisher. He got back quadru-
ple the amount he put in when he took ACI public in
1995, with a market cap of roughly $400 million.
After nally leaving ACI in 2001, Fisher went onto other ventures, including in 2007, co-founding
Sojern, which now has agreements with all the major
airlines to provide the advertisements printed on
boarding passes, and in 2009, starting Treetop. He
also began investing in tech newcomers.
Fisher says, over his lifetime, he has di sbursed
more than $100 million of capital to startups. He has
investments, or board seats, in Sojern, FTNI (a cor-
porate portals company), the MeNetwork and Lodo
Software, among others.
All these years later, there are still traces of ACI in
his business dealings.
Two friends from ACI are part of Treetop: Tom
Boje, who was chief information ocer, and Dwight
Hanson, who was the chief nancial ocer.
ALWAYS ONFisher has been involved in computing since near its
commercial inception. He was a computer operator
in the Air Force during Vietnam, when the machineswere programmed with punch cards. He used that
skill to keep himself employed and support his family
while he attended college in Indiana and then gradu-
ate school in Omaha.
Now hes been at the ntech game for than 30
years, and in the conference room, he returns to
swiveling as he explains why it never gets old.
I dont know if its the thrill of the hunt, watch-
ing these things turn into something, that makes me
invest capital and chase these opportunities, he says.
I think its because I like seeing stu grow, and I like
to see winners and I like to be a part of building it.
I just like working.
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 17
IMAGE:AlyssaSchukar
24 Bank Technology news | novemBer 2012 banktechnews.com
024_BTNNov12 3 10/24/2012 5:02:16 PM