Entrepreneurs of the Year 2014

Murchison Capital Partners LP

ROBERT MURCHISON AND  BURK MURCHISON
PARTNERS

Burk and Robert Murchison were early in their business careers when their father, Clint Murchison Jr., was forced into bankruptcy. They weren’t prepared for the legal and financial complexities it would create. In 1992, as litigation with their father’s creditors was winding down, they put most of their net worth into a new enterprise, Murchison Capital Partners. Their grandfather, Clint Murchison, Sr., a pioneer of the oil and gas industry, and their father, who founded the Dallas Cowboys and Centex Corp., both had strong entrepreneurial instincts, but they had relied heavily on bank leverage. Burk and Robert decided they would do things differently. “We concentrated on industries that we know best,” Robert says, “real estate, railroads, and energy.” In addition, they rarely used debt, kept their overhead low, invested with industry partners in real estate and energy, and hired entrepreneurial management in their railroad business. Since launching MCP, the brothers have managed returns of more than 15 percent, despite economic volatility along the way. Both say they love what they do, and hope the next generation might one day want to step into their shoes. But they believe successful family businesses depend on having a “confederacy of the willing.” So time will tell. In the meantime, “we bring the family together about every 18 months. We review finances and bring in resources to help them plan their careers,” Burk says. “We have a lot of fun, too, but we view it as an educational forum.” —G.V.

Hail Merry LLC

SUSAN O’BRIEN
FOUNDER

SARAH CHAPIN
CEO AND PARTNER

Not everyone can say their multimillion-dollar company got its start in a backyard pool cabana, but that’s exactly where Hail Merry was born. In just five years, the company has gone from that cabana into leased space in an FDA facility, then into its own certified gluten-free commercial kitchen. This year, it’s giving itself room to continue to grow by tripling its manufacturing space. Based in Dallas, Hail Merry makes refrigerated vegan, gluten-free, non-GMO, and kosher snacks and desserts, and celebrates the use of plant-based oils. It’s the brainchild of Susan O’Brien. In the early days, she sold into local markets, starting with Roy’s Natural Foods in 2008. Today, Hail Merry products are available nationally at more than 2,500 natural, specialty, and traditional retail outlets. O’Brien was introduced to Sarah Chapin, who had 30 years of big food company experience, by a mutual friend, and the two women became partners. “Sarah wrote the business plan and we soon got into Whole Foods,” O’Brien says. “We went national in two years.” They were joined by Alison Brushaber, a food scientist and trained chef, while the company was still operating out of O’Brien’s home. “When we came out of the cabana, revenue was less than $100,000,” Chapin says. “We got to our first million in about a year-and-a-half, and in the next four years the company grew tenfold.” —G.V.

Nexius Solutions Inc.

NABIL AND NADEM “NED” TALEB
CO-FOUNDERS

In a sense, an entrepreneur is like a surfer, riding a wave of spending in an industry. Nabil and Nadim “Ned” Taleb chose to surf one of the biggest spending waves of our times: The build-out of networks for telecommunications, corporate, and government purposes. And what a ride it has been. In 2001, the brothers started a company called Nexius to provide various types of engineering and technical services to operators of big wireless networks. That happened just as the speculative mania in telecom spending was cresting and starting to burst. But they stuck with it and even added software products to their repertoire, a product line they sold in 2010 for three times the company’s revenue.
After the sale, the Allen-based business was reincorporated as Nexius Solutions, Nexius Insight, and Nexius Fusion. Between 2009 and 2012, the company’s revenue grew 128 percent, from $32.2 million to $73.2 million. That was good enough to get it a ranking of 2,731 in the Inc. 5000 of last year. And that train has kept rolling. Last year at this time, Nexius had roughly 500 employees spread across four continents. Today, it has more than 1,000, according to its website. —J.B.

OneSource Virtual

BRIAN WILLIAMS
CO-FOUNDER AND CEO

OneSource Virtual may have started at a tough time, but it has always had one watchword: growth. The business resells, implements, and provides related services around software from California’s Workday Inc., which handles human resource and payroll chores. A trio of guys—Brian Williams, Wesley Bryan, and Britt Wirt—launched OneSource Virtual in late 2008 and brought its business operations to life in 2009, right at the trough of the U.S. economic implosion. Despite this, revenue climbed from $315,000 in 2009 to $36 million in 2013, and Williams, the company’s CEO, predicts sales should clock in at $62 million this year. “We got into it at the right time,” he says. “We proved we can execute, and we continue to execute.” With more than 400 employees, Irving-based OneSource plans to add a servicing center in the Phoenix area later this year. That facility will bring aboard roughly 100 people over the 12 months after it opens, Williams says. OneSource is also looking to add a small United Kingdom office in the middle of next year. Williams and company are taking a slow and methodical approach to moving into Britain and possibly parts beyond, owing to the various landmines that exist for businesses going into foreign lands. Meanwhile, OneSource last year raised a total of about $22 million from New York’s Halyard Capital. Williams is keeping that money as dry powder to take advantage of growth opportunities, such as possible acquisitions. —J.B.

PhysAssist Scribes Inc.

J. ALEXANDER GEESBREGHT
PRESIDENT

J. Alexander “Alex” Geesbreght’s dad, an emergency department doctor, never intended for PhysAssist Scribes to be a business. John Geesbreght started using medical scribes as a way to help his busy ED docs spend more time with patients and less time documenting the patient encounter into an electronic medical record. But as EMRs became more popular, the younger

“Scribes drastically increase the efficiency in the ED. Scribes are documenting the EMR in real time, so it’s a parallel process.”

Alex Geesbreght

Geesbreght saw a solution to a problem, specifically a lack of productivity in the ED brought on by EMRs. In a busy setting, doctors would spend 5 minutes treating the patient and 25 minutes charting the information. “Scribes drastically increase the efficiency in the ED,” says Alex Geesbreght, who worked as a medical malpractice attorney before joining the company as general counsel in 2003. “Scribes are documenting the EMR in real time, so it’s a parallel process. There are two people doing two things at the same time.” When Geesbreght took over in 2005, the company had 40 scribes who provided 3,000 hours of coverage a month. In 2013, PhysAssist had 1,500 scribes providing 130,000 hours of coverage a month. In the last six years, the company has grown up to 60 percent annually, he says. PhysAssist also operates two scribe training locations in Fort Worth and Chicago. “We’re doing what we love, and it has the ability to affect everyone we touch in a positive way,” Geesbreght says. “That’s a neat business to be in.” —K.N.