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Apfelbach goes from engineer to entrepeneur

MADISON — Eric Apfelbach is chemical engineer by education who became a businessman by necessity.

After graduating UW-Madison in 1984, he moved to Dallas and joined the semi-conductor industry during what Apfelbach refers to as its "wild West" era.

His company went belly up, but he found himself good at sales and rose to senior management with Applied Materials, the world's largest semiconductor equipment company.

Apfelbach also served as general manager and an officer of Planar Systems, a provider of custom information display systems. He had profit and loss responsibility for a global 310-person division that once included Standish Industries in Lake Mills.

"I was doing much more on the business side but also using my chemical engineering knowledge along the way," said Apfelbach, who is married to fellow 1979 Craig graduate Paula Wagner. "Even at Virent, I've had to dust off my old textbooks.

"As far as the entrepreneurship part of it, you just learn as you go."

Before he joined Virent, Apfelbach did some consulting work and co-founded Alfalight, a diode laser company for which he raised $49 million in venture capital, opened international subsidiaries, and grew the company to 85 employees.

Apfelbach is transitioning out of his role at Virent, which will identify his replacement early next year. He might start a new venture capital fund to support engineered technology solutions or start another business.

"My deal is zero to 80 employees," he said. "I'd like to go out every four or five years and create a company.

"The unbelievable thing about start-ups is that you go at warp speed for a few years and then pick up your head and look at what you've become.

"It's amazing."

Apfelbach said an increased entrepreneurial spirit is needed to boost Wisconsin's economy.

"I raised $155 million in eight years," he said. "If I can do a few start-ups and we can get 10 or 20 others to do the same thing around the state, it would be great.

"As a state, we need to crank up as many of these kinds of companies as we can."

Perhaps even in his hometown.

"There's absolutely no reason that someone couldn't drop into Janesville and do something high-tech, and I've talked to the governor about that," Apfelbach said. "That community has a great history of entrepreneurship.

"Look at how many companies there are because one guy wanted to make pens."