IN HUNGARY MOGUL FINDS FERTILE AREA FOR SOFTWARE
Michael Simon
On a whim  Michael Simon sprinted off to Hungary after finishing business school in St. Louis. Twenty years later  he has carved out an unusual niche as perhaps Hungary's most successful software entrepreneur.
 Simon's latest creation to bubble out of Budapest is LogMeIn  a 400-worker outfit that makes software that allows one computing device to take control of another. Using this technology  a person can tap into a home or office PC while on the road with a laptop. Customer support technicians also use LogMeIn's products to take control of people's machines and fix their PC problems.
 Simon's Hungarian tale started in 1992 after he finished business school at Washington University. While pursuing an internship  an opportunity popped up in Budapest.
 "I bought the Lonely Planet guide to Eastern Europe on a shoestring " Simon recalled. "It described Budapest as the Paris of Eastern Europe  and I thought  'That sounds good."'
 In Budapest  Simon discovered a wealth of smart engineers fresh out of school and hungry for opportunities -- for relatively modest wages.
 He ended up running a software firm that contracted with companies outsourcing their engineering work. Then in 1995 he founded Uproar  a software company that built Web versions of games like Family Feud and bingo.
 Simon kept in touch with the engineering team that had managed to make the most of limited computing power and turned to them again when Marton Anka  a Hungarian software engineer  approached him with the remote access software he had been selling out of his apartment.
 A closely held piece of technology  nicknamed Gravity  lets the company handle all these connections at a lower cost than other companies can  Simon said.
 "You can think of Gravity as sort of a connectomatic " he said. "We can serve hundreds of millions of devices from an extraordinarily small number of computers."
On a whim  [TGT] sprinted off to Hungary after finishing business school in St. Louis. Twenty years later  [TGT] has carved out an unusual niche as perhaps Hungary's most successful software entrepreneur.
 [TGT]'s latest creation to bubble out of Budapest is LogMeIn  a 400-worker outfit that makes software that allows one computing device to take control of another. Using this technology  a person can tap into a home or office PC while on the road with a laptop. Customer support technicians also use LogMeIn's products to take control of people's machines and fix their PC problems.
 [TGT]'s Hungarian tale started in 1992 after he finished business school at Washington University. While pursuing an internship  an opportunity popped up in Budapest.
 "I bought the Lonely Planet guide to Eastern Europe on a shoestring " [TGT] recalled. "It described Budapest as the Paris of Eastern Europe  and I thought  'That sounds good."'
 In Budapest  [TGT] discovered a wealth of smart engineers fresh out of school and hungry for opportunities -- for relatively modest wages.
 [TGT] ended up running a software firm that contracted with companies outsourcing their engineering work. Then in 1995 [TGT] founded Uproar  a software company that built Web versions of games like Family Feud and bingo.
 [TGT] kept in touch with the engineering team that had managed to make the most of limited computing power and turned to them again when Marton Anka  a Hungarian software engineer  approached [TGT] with the remote access software [TGT] had been selling out of [TGT] apartment.
 A closely held piece of technology  nicknamed Gravity  lets the company handle all these connections at a lower cost than other companies can  [TGT] said.
 "You can think of Gravity as sort of a connectomatic " [TGT] said. "We can serve hundreds of millions of devices from an extraordinarily small number of computers."