Thomas, 43, is best known as one of the high flyers of the telecom boom of the 1990s. He launched Net2000, a “competitive local exchange carrier,” in 1993, took it public in 2000, and ran the company until its bankruptcy filing and sale to Cavalier Telephone in 2002. These days Thomas is running Razorsight, a Fairfax-based firm that sells business intelligence software. He joined its board in April 2004 and became its CEO in February 2005. Previously, he helped launch Claris Capital, a boutique investment bank and authored “Entrepreneur: A CEO’s Lessons in American Capitalism.” The Lynchburg native came to the Washington area in 1990 when Bell Atlantic, his employer at the time, promoted him to a local sales position. Razorsight has 200 employees, half based in Bangalore, India. It was founded five years ago by Sundeep Sanghavi, who remains its chairman. In December, it closed on its first venture capital, a Series A round of $10 million from Sierra Ventures of Menlo Park, California.

Tania Anderson, for Bisnow on Business: What does Razorsight do?
It’s a software company that helps financial executives to better manage costs. The way we do that is we have proprietary technology that can extract data from any invoice format or purchase order contract, whether they are in paper or electronic format. What happens today is that, despite the great promise of EDI, over 80% of invoices within the supply chain are manually processed, with paper and human intervention. We provide full automation of the entire invoice life cycle and detailed visibility into every line item on every invoice, as well as analytics and audit and spend analysis.

What stands out about Razorsight?
We’ve not seen anyone else who can capture and extract data down to the most detailed level the way our software does it.

What are your ambitions for the company?
We are heads down focused on growth, building out the direct sales organization in the first quarter, now building out partner and sales channels and looking at international expansion.

What are you doing differently from the founder, who was the previous CEO?
Sundeep is still very much involved. He built a tremendous foundation, landed marquee clients such as AT&T, Verizon, MCI, Qwest, and Sprint. But I have tried to do several new things. I have repositioned and rebranded the company to go beyond the telecom vertical, into areas such as retail, financial services, health care, and manufacturing, with new clients such as General Motors and Comcast. Second has been to recruit additional experienced management, such as a new COO, VP of product of development, VP of professional services, and VP of worldwide sales; and finally, to recruit venture capital to accelerate growth, and to grow the sales and partner channels.

Your last company was telecom, this is software. How do you compare your experiences?
It’s very similar in many regards. We sell our software as a service. It’s a hosted solution that we host on behalf of our clients. They use it over the Internet. It’s easy to install, highly scalable, no capital expenditure for them. It’s proven to save money. We have the same growth challenges I faced in my past life. There are a number of moving parts that crop up day to day, such as production, operations, customer service, personnel, integrating new employees. It’s all very exciting and very fun but we go through some of the growth challenges and pains that traditional fast growing tech-oriented companies go through.

What are the unique challenges today compared to when you ran Net2000?
One of the big differences is that more than half of my people are halfway around the globe. I have more than 100 folks in Bangalore, India, who are full-time Razorsight employees. They’re 12 hours ahead, which enables us to be a 24-7 operation. I have to communicate with those folks either very early in the morning, which is their evening, or very late at night, which is their morning. I go over once a quarter as do the other executives on my team. We try to make sure one of the executives is there every month. When half of your assets are halfway around the globe, there are pros and cons to that. It certainly presents challenges from a management perspective. Fortunately we have some very strong people on the ground there to oversee that. But nonetheless, it’s a different phenomenon than what I’ve experienced in a past life.

Why are those employees there?
We opened that office in August 2004 for several reasons. Number one, the technical skill set of the employee base there is superb. The technical colleges, the training and the technical skills of the India employee base are exceptional. Number two, there has been an economic advantage to being there from a development perspective. The labor rates are far below what they are in the U.S. That is quickly changing. That wage arbitrage is quickly disappearing especially in Bangalore. The third reason is the work ethic. The employees there are highly motivated, working long hours. There’s a whole cultural phenomenon in India where the middle class is rapidly growing. And there’s a plethora of young Indian workers who are highly motivated and highly driven to be successful. They’re willing to make the sacrifices it takes to realize that.

Are they more motivated than the young people coming out of U.S. colleges?
It’s hard to compare and contrast the two in many regards. They’re definitely highly motivated and among the most motivated I’ve seen anywhere. Their spirits and attitude are exceptional. I don’t want to stereotype because we also have some incredibly bright talent coming out of American universities. We’re known for having the best universities in the world.

Why did you take the job at Razorsight?
I longed for being back, running and operating a company. When I was doing Claris Capital for three years, my colleagues knew that ultimately I would go back and run a business. The nice thing about being at Claris was it really was an ideal platform to see a lot of business plans, evaluate a lot of emerging growth companies, stay connected and see trends. When I first met this company and its founder, I initially became involved on the board for a year before I became full time. I was able to gain a firm understanding of the company’s value proposition and our technology and our enormous growth potential. I got really excited about the company as a board member and then when they approached me about a full-time engagement, I was very excited about it.

How did the experience of seeing Net2000 file for bankruptcy and then get sold affect you personally?
It happened so suddenly so there wasn’t a lot of time to agonize over it. I have always focused my attention ahead and not too much behind. I was highly disappointed and frustrated but I didn’t mull over it too much. What’s done is done. There’s nothing I can do to change it. It was unfortunate and not really in the scheme of fairness but it did happen. Fortunately for me I started Net2000 when I was 30 so I was still very young. Most entrepreneurs start later than that. I had plenty of companies ahead of me.

Does it bother you to have the ‘b’ word in your professional history?
It’s funny. On the East Coast, especially in the venture community, folks look at that as a negative scenario. No one likes it. But I can look at some very prominent executives like Alex Mandl at Teligent or Dan Akerson at XO Communications, both of whom were very successful executives before bankruptcy and after. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone but certainly if you go to the West Coast investment community, they’re much more tolerant of companies that weren’t ultimately successes because they understand that people learn from mistakes as much as they learn from successes. I’ve been through the full life cycle that an entrepreneur can go through, probably much more so than most folks who have kept the growth of their companies very small. We grew Net2000 to $150 million. A lot of entrepreneurs I know have grown companies to $10 million or $20 million and sold at the right time and made a decent amount of money. But they really didn’t get the full breadth of experience that I got.

Is there anything you would have done differently?
Absolutely. The biggest thing really is timing. We had opportunities to sell the business before and after the IPO for a considerable amount of money. We could have sold the company for $500 million or $600 million cash. We had some very smart investors around the table, none of whom believed it was the right time to sell. The market was taking a downturn, but people were very bullish. Growth was doubling and people really thought we were going to grow to a multi-billion dollar business. No one was really focused on an exit. Second, I would have stuck to our initial focus for the first seven years. We had a regional focus and strategy. But we listened to the Wall Street experts and expanded to a national strategy which is when we took on the debt.

What’s the most interesting thing you’ve done in the last year?
Most definitely for me was my first ever visit to India. I went over for the first time in late November through early December. I went to visit our employees for 10 days and I also flew three hours north to Delhi and drove four hours to Agra and went to see Taj Mahal. It was just overwhelming to see how they built that structure with such precision and attention to detail 400 years ago. Just the culture and the people and to see for the first time the phenomenon. I traveled pretty extensively throughout Europe but had not been to Asia or a third world country. Also, I read “The World Is Flat,” so to see that was just very moving. I’m going back next month for 10 days.

Did you go exploring on your own?
My employees there were quite helpful. I also went with Mark Mendes, who is the chairman and CEO of Wisor Telecom. He had been my COO at Net2000. He has 130 employees there and he goes about four times a year.

What else do you want to see there?
I want to stop by Dubai. The founder of my company has family there. I’d like to see the engineering feats they’re doing where they’re pulling out sand from the bottom of the ocean and building out islands that you can see from outer space. There’s lots of Asia that I want to see.

[This interview conducted by Tania Anderson for Bisnow on Business.]