It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to head up a software engineering and recruiting firm.

It takes an award-winning one.

Dale Gantous, 51, the CEO of Ottawa-based InGenius didn’t set out to be a magnate, but the mathematician who once launched satellites is now at the helm of a growing, multi-faceted business.

Anybody from Montreal knows I had to have some street smarts to survive and make it out of there

“In the last year we’ve doubled our business. I expect we’ll be able to do it again next year,” says the latest recipient of the Sara Kirke Entrepreneurs Award.

Part of Gantous’- and InGenius- success is due to their diversity. The company has three main business lines; IT staffing, custom software engineering and telephony software products, and Gantous has a hand in all.

“It might sound schizophrenic, but we prefer eclectic. It works really well for us,” Gantous laughs.

InGenius boasts an impressive client list, “InGenius boasts an impressive client list, including Mitel networks, France Telecom, several Canadian Federal Government departments and Nortel Networks.

It took me a long time before I knew that in order to be successful, I needed to get in front of customers . . . I was kind of enamored with the technology and science of it all. But technology doesn’t matter if you don’t figure out how to solve [their] problems.

Engineering and Recruiting and Products, oh my

Gantous notes that InGeniusPeople recently landed a “very key, standing offer” with the federal government. But InGenius is, at the core, a technical company.

“We do custom software engineering projects for our clients in the telecom and video industry. These are generally long-term relationships that are very technical in nature. We’re tied in very closely at an R&D level but also at a marketing level with our clients. It’s our job to be very creative to get them ahead and build systems that will move them ahead competitively,” she says.

The company also develops their own software products, depending on the distribution networks of their clients – such as Mitel – for sales.

We had an offer to buy from Yahoo Inc. that we unfortunately, didn’t take. That was a big mistake.

Growing companies through, and past, the bubble

Since joining the company as CEO in 1993, Gantous has helped to grow recruiting operations, and has been integral in the launch of two spin-off companies; Rewind Technologies, a data backup company, and sofTV.net, a software company that offers streaming video solutions to education, high-tech, and government customers.

“Around 1998 when the tech bubble was really percolating, we went into expansion mode,” she says with a smile audible over the phone.

“ReWind did one thing for one customer really well. We did North America wide data backup and restoration for Nortel PC users,” she explains.

Dale Gantous, CEO of InGenius and Winner of the 2008 Sark Kirke Award for Technology Entrepreneurship

“Nortel loved the service and we did it very profitably. We did it for as long as Nortel had the budget to do such things. When the bubble burst, we folded that back into our operations. We learned a lot about running a managed service and about the service business.”

Building a news media mashup

SoftTV was Gantous’ first product company. The multimedia television offering and rendering engine enabled users to broadcast live, video casts with synchronized content.

“We built the original version of CP24. It was a computer-generated TV channel that took stuff like stock quotes from Reuter’s, weather from the weather network, a live video broadcast and put them all on screen at the same time,” she says.

With the advent of online streaming, InGenius turned to the web. Their software was used by universities – including Princeton – to stream live broadcasts of lectures on the web, with lecture materials and notes on screen.

ShopNBC.com also used the program to broadcast product information and advertisements on the web.

“We had an offer to buy from Yahoo Inc. that we unfortunately, didn’t take. That was a big mistake,” Gantous says with surprising enthusiasm. “We had several offers actually, from Microsoft too, but eventually the bubble burst. We’re happy where we are now.”

From launching rockets to launching companies

Gantous’ ability to take failures and setbacks in stride is a small secret to her success.

I wanted to get closer to customers and I wanted to learn more about the business side of things

Born in Montreal, she was raised in the east end. “Below the tracks,” she laughs. “Anybody from Montreal knows I had to have some street smarts to survive and make it out of there.”

She graduated from McGill University in 1979 with an honours degree in math and minor in computer science. Soon after, she found herself in a real-life episode of Star Trek.

“I got the coolest job out of everybody in my entire graduating class,” she boasts. “I got a job at Telesat Canada planning rocket firings with Canadian communications satellites.”

“It gives me a lot of street cred’ with the engineers,” she explains. “They know that I was overseeing, planning and writing the software for rocket launches. They think it’s pretty cool.”

After eight years of what she dubs “very, very technical work”, Gantous moved into a more customer-oriented role in project management.

“I wanted to get closer to customers and I wanted to learn more about the business side of things. Eventually, I got promoted to a middle-management position where I was responsible for the network management and control systems for the voice, data and video networks that Telesat provided services on.”

Gantous hired a budding InGenius, manned by Rich Loen, for several projects with Telesat. Impressed with the work they delivered, she jumped at the chance to come on board.

A budding (In)Genius

When Gantous joined InGenius in 1993, it was a small operation with only four partners. Considerable time was spent consulting. “I went to the federal government and did some work in the telecom and IT area, Rich (Loen) went to a different area and our other partners went to the private sectors.”

“We really got a feel for how we could help them, what their businesses were like and what type of pressures they were facing,” she says.

Face time with customers has meant that Gantous and the InGenius group have been able to not only address customers’ current woes, but foresee and avert future problems; in turn, helping the company to grow to 40 employees.

Gantous, who oozes personality and laughs more than a dozen times in 15 minutes, seems like a natural people-person. But moving from bits, chips and satellites to conference calls, luncheons and faces took time.

“It took me a long time before I knew that in order to be successful, what I needed to do was get in front of customers. That took at least ten years for me to figure it out,” she says.

“Perhaps because I came from a technical background I was enamored with the technology and science of it all. But technology doesn’t matter if you don’t figure out how to solve customer’s problems.”

For the love of good company

It might take time for Gantous to learn a lesson, but when she does, she truly embraces it. Seven years after joining InGenius, she “joined forces” with Loen.

“We just looked at each other and said, ‘hey, you’re kind of cute.’ Many years later we got married. Honestly, the integration of work and personal life works fantastically for us.”

“I’m sure for some people it would be difficult. But with us, we worked together for seven years before anything else happened. By the time we got together as a couple, he had seen the good, the bad and the ugly. We knew each other very well.”

While workplace romances often leave a path of destruction, Loen and Gantous have been able to carve out a path to success and create several projects- including Everett and Nicholas, their twin five-year old boys.

Gantous concedes it’s not always easy rearing two growing boys and helping to steer a growing business, but says “the work-home balance is way easier when each partner understands all the pressures and can help each other solve them. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“The only thing that really matters is being successful; being successful for your customers and yourself. It doesn’t matter if you look or talk or do things a certain way, so long as you’re successful,” she says. “And you’re having fun.”