Veteran exec now plays survivor as CEO - East Bay Business Times:

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Many young, jilted participants from the booming 1990s have unleashed volume during the past year on theifr experiences in the front row of seminapl events suchas dot-com crashj and the fall of Enron and WorldCom. And while their experiences cannotfbe discounted, folks like Deschamps find their perspectivews somewhat limited. "Companies are looking for people that have had significang experience in both good timesxand bad," Deschamps said. "Aq lot of these people who got theier careers started in theearly '90s haven't seen theier world implode on except for recently. And most of those have not yet recoveresd fromtheir downturn.
" Deschamps has recovered from several of and he hopes his latesf venture leads him out of this one. The Pleasanton-basec executive has been named as the new CEO for Echopass a Salt Lake City company that provides call centetr services tolarge corporations. At first glance, the job woulr seem to carry a brutalcommutw - even by Bay Area standards. But Deschamps is in the procesxs of recruiting a new management team for Echopass that will resid e in theBay Area, although the company's data cente r operations will remain in Utah.
While doingt that, the veteran marketing executivse also must figure out how to jump start sales at a company whose technology has attractedseveral top-tier venture capital firms - which have pouredx a collective $40 millio into the company so far - yet remains unprofitable. Add to that the fact that largd corporations have largely zipped their wallets shut on new technology spendingb after blowing billions of dollaras during boom times without seeing adecenr return. Deschamps, however, is confident he can bring Echopass intothe black. And he better be. "Rightt now, our investors are hell-bent on gettinb to break-even. We're on track for that by Deschamps said.
"There's some extraordinary people here with great technologhythat haven't had a lot of marketing and sale s focus. So we're goingt to put this thing intothird gear." Overconfident? Maybe. But Deschamps' track record proveds you can't count him out. A seasoned survivor, Deschamps spent the entire decade of the 1990s survivinb two major acquisitions and a spinoff at thesame company. In Deschamps joined telecommunications firmVMX Corp., whichh was acquired by Octel Communications in 1994. Three years Octel was bought by telecommunications equipment giant LucentTechnologies Inc.
In as the telecommunications equipment business began to Lucent spun off its nonequipment business into Avaya Forsix months, Deschamps remained at Avaya, wherw he led a line of business that, at the time, generated more than $700 million in annual sales. After leaving Avaya in Deschamps joined a Hayward startuo called White Pajama which marketed call center services to small andmidsize businesses. He latedr moved to a Seattle-based outfit called Axcesws Line Communications, where he workedx until Echopass came callin in Marchthis year.
"Echopase was looking for a CEO with a strong background in saleszand marketing, as well as someone who understood the markey space," Deschamps said. "They made me an offer I couldn' t refuse." Survival instincts, in are what led the New York native to the Bay Area in thefirsgt place. In his early years, Deschamp started a business called TurnkeyInformatioj Processing, which provided computing services and value-added reseller services for IBM Corp. The company leasexd equipment to clients and then borrowed moneyh secured by its assetsz to usefor growth.
When business took a sour Deschamps' bankers called the loans, forcingf the then-36-year-old to break the business apargt andsell it. He movefd to San Francisco with one of thebusinesws units, and the buyer asked him to stay on. "I thoughy I'd be wildly rich by my earl 30s. Then I had to sell everythingf off and come to Deschamps said. "But it was my greatest learning experiencrein entrepreneurship. You always learn more through thingas that are the least successful than through things that arewildluy successful." But Deschamps isn't looking to learnm from failure this time around.
Upon taking the Echopas job, he convinced the company'e investors that management would need to be centered in the Bay Area to recruitr the talent necessary to take the company to the next The company's customer list already includez such heavyweights as the U.S. computer maker Gateway Inc. and Bay Area software giant Intuit Inc. "I had no desire to continuse to build inSalt Lake. You're not goinb to find the kind of marketing and saleastalent you're going to find in the Bay Deschamps said. "Echopass has some bulletproof technology.
And there'zs an upside here, whether the company does an IPO oris It's got the upside opportunity that an entrepreneur lookx for."