Brothers' businesses thrive, inspired by father's legacy

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Three family members. Three different eras of innovation. One shared spirit of entrepreneurship.

Bob and Scott Long have two very different businesses – with one common motivator.

MetaCommunications, launched by Bob in Iowa City in the 90s, produces an elite software package for marketers at Fortune 500 companies around the world.

Zero Energy Systems, launched by Scott in Coralville this year, produces energy-efficient concrete wall panels in a state of the art automated manufacturing facility.

Both started with their father.

'When you make that choice to be an entrepreneur, there's something that influenced you to get there. In our case, my brother and I, it was watching our father growing up,' said Scott Long. 'He always started his own businesses. He was never employed by anybody, he never had a job. He always had technology around the house that was very cool.'

Robert Long founded Thermomass and turned it into the industry standard for insulated concrete. Although he passed away last fall, the business is still growing in Boone.

While Scott inherited his father's streak for manufacturing innovation, Bob and their third brother in Michigan, Jon, were influenced by the early models of Apple computers they had to tinker with, developing a passion for software. (Jon manages large data centers and hasn't started a business 'yet,' Bob said.)

Although the world has changed tremendously since Robert Long invented Thermomass in his home, his sons have followed his lead to thrive in different eras of entrepreneurship. Bob launched Meta during the height of the digital publishing revolution, and Scott is preparing to face huge disruption as the world of manufacturing becomes more high-tech.

'Our whole family has a passion for entrepreneurship,' Bob said. 'We grew up with it.'

Bob: Internet entrepreneur

Bob Long started as many entrepreneurs do – to pay the bills.

While a student at the University of Iowa in the 90s, Long began creating desktop publishing solutions. When a 20 megabyte hard drive was state of the art, Long was creating software to help local companies with design and pre-press work.

During the past 20 years, MetaCommunications matured to a project management solution for creative and marketing departments at some of the world's largest companies. When a piece of printed material, website or video needs to go through many stages of ideation, design, approvals and revisions – think labels for newly-approved pharmaceuticals or the on-screen graphics during the Super Bowl – Meta's software guides the process along, helping to avoid errors and omissions.

Meta counts companies like FoxSports, USA Today, AllState Insurance and Diageo, makers of Smirnoff, Johnnie Walker and Guinness, among their clients.

Long said Meta has been a bit of a 'sleeper company,' since they have many national and international clients but few locally have heard of them.

That may soon change. With assistance from the City of Iowa City, Meta is moving into Marc Moen's new Park@201 building in the heart of the pedestrian mall, and launching new products at events around the country. Now that desktop publishing is nothing new, Long is looking for ways to continue innovating.

In the past two years, Meta's business has moved from 90 percent on-site to 90 percent cloud-based.

'We have really taken off. Our business has about doubled since last year, and we think it's going to double again this year,' he said.

For example, in March, Meta previewed proofme.com at the Adobe Summit 2014 conference in Salt Lake City. The website allows users to upload and proof documents, videos and PDFs. The company hopes cloud-based, freemium products can drive clients to their enterprise-level software.

Long credited West Bank for helping the company grow. During the depths of the recession, the bank helped the company secure a SBA loan, which Meta invested in software development. As clients are increasing their marketing budgets again, Meta is prepared with a superior product, Long said.

However, growth comes with challenges. Long said finding software engineers has been an 'excruciating process,' with a handful of positions open at any given time. Meta currently employs around 40 in the U.S., mostly in Iowa City, and a dozen engineers in St. Petersburg, Russia. The new downtown building can hold 60, and Long hopes to quickly fill it and expand again within a few years.

While he likes the idea of downtown billboard being plastered with high-tech job listings instead of bar specials, he also knows that he's competing against startups in a world where anyone with a laptop has the potential to disrupt an entire industry.

'It's forced our company to take a hard look at how innovative we are,' he said. 'It's not the same game.'

Scott: Rethinking manufacturing

While Bob Long started his company during the desktop publishing revolution, brother Scott Long laid in wait. Now, Scott's company is poised to ride the wave of another revolution: automated manufacturing.

Automation has impacted nearly every industry, from agriculture (see Kinze's driverless tractor) to retail, mining and video surveillance. As the maker movement brings manufacturing technology like 3D printing into people's homes, the changes in how things are made will only accelerate.

Long recently opened Zero Energy Systems at a $15 million facility in Coralville.  The company poured its first test product on March 18.

The insulated concrete wall panels made by ZES are highly fire- and wind-resistant, faster and cheaper to produce, and very efficient, with a net-zero energy impact.

While the product has impressive properties, it's not new – indeed, it is a variation on the Thermomass product Long's father created. The true innovation of ZES is in the manufacturing process.

Observing his father's business, Long started to question why more builders weren't using the product. He traveled to Germany in the late 90s, where concrete is the primary building material and factories like his are the equivalent to a U.S. lumberyard, and started to learn about automated manufacturing.

While a typical concrete pour would be done outside, with about 20 people manually measuring and plotting, the ZES system is basically a giant inkjet printer, producing 12- by 42-foot walls from directions entered on a touch panel inside the giant, clean room. The automation makes the process much faster and more accurate.

Using these methods, all the wall panels needed for a typical Midwestern school could be created and ready to ship in three days. (Long's own plant, in contrast, took four months to build as they were pouring their own panels in the parking lot.)

ZES also created a software module that engineers can use while designing a structure. While the engineer is designing in AutoCAD, the software will seamlessly send instructions to the plant for manufacturing the desired panels.

The business has been in the works for seven years, and it took four years for Long and his business partner, Manoj Krishan, to secure financing for the plant during the depths of the recession. They had also planned to build in California, but changed course after the housing crisis hit particularly hard there.

'it seemed like nothing would ever be built again,' Long said. 'Now there's a fresh perspective on responsible and sustainable growth.'

ZES was eventually funded with state money through the High Quality Jobs Program (ZES will pay 130 percent of the average private-sector wage in Johnson County), Tax Increment Financing (TIF) from the city of Coralville, bank financing and personal equity.

The high startup costs have prevented widespread adoption of the model in the U.S., Long said. Traditional manufacturers and building companies, which may create many different products, are more comfortable with accepting inefficiencies that are part of the industry standard than they are with making a $20 million investment up-front.

'It looks so simple now – but to get to this result is very complicated,' Long said.

Long's plant will employ 12, but he believes the impact of bringing automated manufacturing to the Corridor will touch many more through ZES' supply chain and installation network.

Before founding ZES, Long was a Johnson County paramedic for 12 years.

'I knew I wanted to be in my own world as an entrepreneur,' he said.