Alfred mann says it is the possibility of making sick people well, not money, that motivates him Mayor Richard Riordan said of Alfred Mann, “When he wants something done, he never stops. “He’s on your back all the time.” That lifelong persistence might be paying off in more than one way. Last month, Mann, in his capacity as executive chairman of MiniMed Inc., officially inaugurated a 504,000-square-foot biomedical facility on the northern edge of the Cal State Northridge campus. At the same time, he introduced the 100,000th diabetes patient to wear a MiniMed insulin pump: 8-year-old Tyler Roy. But MiniMed is just one of eight companies Mann leads. And 1,100 people who now work at the Northridge biomedical operation are just part of the 2,400 he employs in the San Fernando Valley alone. With an estimated personal fortune of $1.6 billion and a career that took him from the UCLA physics department, through the development of the heart pacemaker to the top of the biotech industry, it would be easy to imagine most 74-year-old entrepreneurs looking for a way to wind down a career. But Mann says he plans to see the artificial pancreas his scientists are working on a reality before he calls it quits. And he is often quick to say he’d rather see someone like young Tyler Roy able to live comfortably with his disease than the value of his stock increase. And yet, it’s hard to divorce the man who steered medical technology to a new frontier from the one who was also able to take MiniMed (a money loser in 1994) to a company that would earn 70 cents a share on $212 million in revenue in 1999. Or the man who started his first company at the age of 30 with $21,000 all because the U.S. Army needed some help the company he was working for Technicolor couldn’t offer at the time. Question: One week last month, you took what you called an “unusual step” by arranging a conference call with the media to defend MiniMed’s fourth-quarter performance. Apparently the following day, MiniMed’s stock price jumped 19 percent. Is this the kind of triage duty you expected to be doing when you began your career? Answer: We didn’t really spend that much time on it (in January). Last year, analysts predicted $287 million in revenue for us. During the year they raised the ante because we had a blow-out fourth quarter. They raised expectations. We were in range of revenues of $52 million to $56 million, and we did $54 million. There were a lot of rumors and the stock just tanked. We knew we were going to get questions. But I really enjoy the technical aspects and the humans involved more than dealing with administration. I have a very strong team that handles most of it. I do spend a lot of time dealing with Wall Street. I’d enjoy more of the technology interests than I have time for. Q: You’ve started eight companies and acquired two more during your career. Did you intend as a young man to be the kind of entrepreneur you turned out to be? A: I was a physicist, working in physical optics at Technicolor. The U.S. military had become very interested in our technology and both the Air Force and the Army sought our help. The Army needed something they couldn’t get from anybody else and, when Technicolor refused to continue making parts for them, they set me up in business. I never expected to be in business. But I moved on, founding my first real business venture, a company called Spectrolab. An uncle gave me $3,000 to start and, borrowing what I could and raising capital from my family, I managed to put together some $21,000. Of course, that was 1956, so $21,000 was real money. Q: Talking about your professional career as an entrepreneur in medical technology starting with Pacesetter Inc. in the late 1960s and continuing to now what was the single biggest challenge you have had to deal with? A: After I started Pacesetter, we created the rechargeable pacemaker. Five years ago, there were still 1,000 people with pacemakers implanted 25 years ago. But in 1976 or 1977, we concluded, while it was a great technological achievement, it wouldn’t be a great commercial success. We decided we needed to develop a different kind of pacemaker. We designed a business plan around it and we projected such a plan would cost about $10 million. I realized it would take all of my personal wealth to make it work. In those days, I’d make a personal tote sheet when I was trying to make a decision. I’d list all the factors that I thought important and try to allocate values to each of the factors. I concluded that no rational man would do it. I was still a pretty young guy and I convinced myself that I could do it. That was a defining decision in my life: risking all my newfound well-being. In 1978 we unveiled our very advanced system and in 1979 we received FDA approval and started selling. Q: When you were working on heart pacemakers in the late 1960s, most people did not know that what is now referred to as biomedical technology would turn into the kind of industry it has. Did you know something at the time that others didn’t? A: I didn’t really think anything about it. The 1950s was when the first pacemaker was conceived. Today we’ve lost sight of the progress we’ve made. In those days, the latest technology was the thermometer. In 1972, we developed the rechargeable pacemaker. After that, I sat down with my senior technology colleague. We made a list of a dozen or so technologies we were developing. I don’t think that I saw the whole picture, but I did see places where technology could make a significant difference in people’s lives. Q: Given your success at advancing technology, making money and keeping the people who work for you happy, there must be something about leadership that you know that others don’t. What is it? A: There’s nothing more important than the people who work up and down the stairs. You need to give them the freedom to do their job. I don’t micromanage them. I let them do their own thing. I’m patient and understanding of mistakes. I’ve very careful to award people for their successes. We occupy a large part of the lives of our employees, so we try to make sure this part is happy and productive. That creates tremendous good will. We have had little difficulty keeping people, even in this period of high employment. And we do nice things. We’re curing cancer and diabetes, for instance. Q: What else do you want to accomplish before you complete your career? A: I get incredible satisfaction from interfacing with people. I want to see an artificial pancreas as a reality. I want to make sure we’ve created a platform cure for cancer. And I’d sure like to see a real visual prosthesis for the blind.