Columbus Monthly / November 2011 / Game plan

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Game plan

Manta CEO Pamela Springer uses the lessons learned as a college basketball player in growing her company and sitting with the big boys on the JobsOhio board.

There’s a basketball hoop at the edge of the parking lot outside Manta Media’s office in the Polaris area. “It was part of our lease agreement, that we had to have a basket,” says company CEO Pamela Springer.

The basket is visible from her office window, and when she glances at it, Springer, 49, often remembers that March Madness day in 1982 when she was the starting shooting guard for Oakland University. The Golden Grizzlies battled their way to the Division II Final Four and had a six-point lead late against Tuskegee University. They were on their way to the National Championship game.

“And then we couldn’t hit our free throws,” Springer says. Tuskegee won 88-82.

Springer is still haunted by the loss almost 30 years later, but says it taught her a valuable lesson, one she put into practice throughout her career in the once emerging and now massive fields of information technology, ecommerce and social networking.

“The biggest lesson was we weren’t prepared for the big stage,” Springer says of the loss to Tuskegee. “It’s not that we didn’t feel confident. But I don’t think we had that psychological edge we needed. I tell this story all the time at meetings and I’ll be damned if I’ll let that happen to me again.”

Springer and Manta—a digital publishing and marketing enterprise for small businesses—appear to have played their way onto the big stage with two recent developments. And she is determined to make the most of the opportunities.

In June, Manta, which has profiles of more than 64 million companies on its website and 22 million monthly users, received a 55 percent, seven-year tax credit from the Ohio Tax Credit Authority to try to add 130 fulltime jobs over the next two years with an average pay of $43 an hour.

And when Gov. John Kasich announced the board members of the new (and controversial) nonprofit JobsOhio, it was filled with several major figures, such as Ohio State president Gordon Gee and Procter & Gamble CEO Bob McDonald—as well as Springer, the lone female.

“We’re at the table with Procter & Gamble,” Springer gushes. “I’d like to think it’s because Manta is something special.”

“She got on my radar through what she’s doing at Manta,” says Mark Kvamme, the governor’s jobs guru and JobsOhio board member and chief investment officer. “And when we sat down and looked at board members, her name came up early. We wanted top-management folks, CEOs, and we wanted someone with Internet and technology experience. And, in addition to this, what Manta does is aggregate small businesses and we felt she’d be a great advocate for small businesses.”

Compared to the other board members, Springer and her company are newcomers to the big boys table. But, ready or not, Springer is now on the hot seat, at Manta and with JobsOhio, the governor’s attempt at privatizing the state’s development department.

One thing is certain: Springer was not a political appointee. She’s a registered Democrat, sort of. “I’m becoming more of an independent,” she says. “The polarization is not encouraging.”

And she’s not about to get into the debate about whether it would be better for the state or a private entity to create all those much-needed jobs in Ohio. “I believe there’s a lot of wood to chop and I’m excited to be part of it,” Springer says. “As for how it’s organized, I’ll leave that for others to sort out.”

Kvamme says he doesn’t know which party Springer belongs to—and doesn’t care. “We just want the best folks on the board,” he says.

Springer grew up professionally along with the IT industry. She started in the mid 1980s working with BBN Technologies, which at the time ran the Defense Data Network (instrumental in the development of that little thing called the Internet). She then got into sales and management at a succession of IT-related data outsourcing and ecommerce companies, such as Metatec, Litton Enterprise Solutions and Interliant.

“The tech field was going crazy,” says Springer. She ran North American sales for Interliant in the early 2000s and built up the company’s ecommerce business with publishing clients, creating websites to sell their products. “And then the bubble burst.”

After Interliant went under, Springer came to Manta—known as ECNext at the time—in March 2003 as vice president of sales. She was given an ultimatum: “They said we have six months of capital remaining and you have to hit certain milestones or we’re shutting down.”

ECNext was in the ecommerce business with publishers, creating websites for them to sell subscriptions, books and articles. The company received a percentage of the revenue generated by the sales. “We also sold large research reports,” Springer says. “We broke them down into chapters and even charts and sold them separately. Now, instead of selling the full reports for thousands of dollars, we could sell the pieces for less and bring in new business.”

Springer hit her milestones . . . and was named CEO in December 2004.

The following year, she expanded the business by partnering with Dun & Bradstreet, which creates and sells credit reports for millions of companies and the U.S. government. “But you could only buy the reports with a subscription to Dun & Bradstreet,” Springer says, adding this limited the amount of reports D&B could sell. She persuaded the company to allow ECNext to sell these reports online and get a cut of the sales, 50 percent initially and more if sales hit certain levels.

It worked, and the website created to sell the credit reports soon began to get millions of hits. Springer noticed that only 5 percent of the hits resulted in sales, which meant there were a lot of people looking—and not buying. Surely, all this traffic presented a business opportunity.

“We realized we had all these people looking, so what else can be on there?” Springer says. “We realized it was a way to locate companies, that we were basically a big map of where these companies are. Eighty percent of U.S. companies have nine or less employees and 50 percent of the companies with five or less employees don’t have a website.”

She adds that her company’s website was the way for these small companies to be found. “So we transformed ourselves from creating websites for publishers and other companies and selling credit reports into this business information site that still sells the credit reports as part of that. The registration is free and we monetize it by selling ads.”

Part of this transformation was renaming the company, from ECNext to Manta Media, and the gradual elimination of the websites for publishing partners. (Manta has no particular significance. “We just wanted something simple and easy to sell,” Springer says.)

Companies around the world create their own profiles on Manta at the rate of more than 2,000 a day. Animal Hospital of Polaris is one of them. “Everybody is looking for everything online now,” says veterinarian and owner Nicole Eaton. In addition to her listing, Eaton says Manta sends out tips for small business owners and there’s a message board for members to post questions—and then hear back from their counterparts all over the country and beyond. “They don’t teach you the business side of this in vet school and I’m onboard with any place where I can get knowledge about how to run my business better.”

Manta—which is owned by two local venture capital firms, Athenian Venture Partners and Reservoir Venture Partners—had $15 million in revenue in 2010. Springer says she anticipates that number to double this year. The company had 53 employees at the start of the year and 76 in early August, with plans to hire more.

Since that day back in March 1982 when all those free throws clanged off the rim, Springer—who says she wasn’t fouled and didn’t go to the line—has been preparing for this moment. “Some people think things happen through revolution, but it’s really evolution,” she says, pointing toward the basketball on her shelf autographed by legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden.

“People forget he was the coach at UCLA for years before he won his first national championship,” says Springer. “You have to build your team and your culture of greatness. And it’s a slow boil.”

Springer, who also is a marathon runner, stills plays basketball. And every Thursday, weather permitting, Manta employees head to the parking lot for a game. Springer participates, which raises the question: Is it OK to take the CEO to the hoop or block her shot?

“If they didn’t, I’d be pissed,” she says.

Steve Wartenberg is a freelance writer.