What is critical to understanding Alec Gores is the old-school nature of his business. He operates in a way that public companies simply cannot. When he bought his first company, a word-processing hardware and software maker called CPT , its owners failed to see the value of its customer base. That was a great example of how to take something that should have been a money maker and make money from it. Of course, a public company can't simply let its operations wind down.
Public investors expect growth.
That's one of the unfortunate conundrums of the public markets. There's no shame in wringing cash out of investments that don't have great growth prospects, but for a Wall Street that wants only going concerns that keep on going, it's no great honor either. What's interesting about Gores is his relative lack of a plan. Today, he has teams of executives with operations experience, but he still seems to know relatively little at the front end of a major deal. Take MicronPC, which Gores lauds for having world-class manufacturing the equal of Dell Computer's.