Talking Points: Fred Brown, Founder/CEO, Next IT

Fred Brown, a calf roper turned entrepreneur, founded Spokane-based Next IT, a leader in using technology to provide “virtual assistants,” computer software that provides human-like interactions to “staff” telephone support systems for such customers as Aetna, Alaska Airlines and the U.S. Army.

Leslie D. Helm | April 2011 | FROM THE PRINT EDITION

Credit: Photograph by Fred Hilker

Fred Brown, CEO, Next IT

Growing Up: I had a wonderful father who would keep me thinking. He taught calculus at the community college in Alberta. It was cold there. Me and my mother had to take care of the cows. We did all the feeding by hand. Once, as a freshman in high school, I tripped over a frozen turd and fell on a fresh one. By the time I got up, it was froze to my face.

The Rodeo: When I was 19, I entered a match-roping tournament in Texas. I got whipped. On the drive back, I told my friend, “I’m going to beat the best guy in the world.” My friend started laughing. I bet every dime I had and I won. I realized I would never have to do something so hard again in my life. There are a lot of similarities between rodeoing and building your own company. You rely on your own internal abilities, the power of the mind. You learn to be self-sufficient, set goals and make things happen.

Career: Dad said to me, “You have to be a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer.” I started on computers to solve engineering problems. Humans are basically lazy, and I’m probably the laziest of all. When I started using computers, it was really hard. Some idiot designed these things. I spelled badly and didn’t like to follow rules. As computers evolved, finding a better way to interface with them was something I’d been thinking about all my life. The easiest way to interact with a computer is to talk to it.

Virtual Employees: Our business is creating human emulation software [used by many phone centers to respond to customer queries]. We built a complex math model that allows us to understand human inputs [questions by voice or e-mail] based on context and a person’s intent and then determine [how to answer the question].

Marketing: People don’t understand what we do. They say, “What the hell is that?” If somebody is going to buy our product, the most important thing is that they trust us. We say, “We’ll do it for free and you can pay us if we deliver.” We have gotten some big customers that way. They figure you must really believe in your product.

Values: We are grounded in