Photo: Lisa and Roland Groeneveld, co-founders of OnLogic. Photo: Baldwin Photography.
You didn't want to use a big computer because it took too much space. You didn't want to use a laptop because someone's going to steal it or break the screen. You don't need a screen and you don't need a keyboard, all you need is the computer thing.
by Joyce Marcel, Vermont Business Magazine
Talk about finding a niche and filling it!
The married couple Lisa and Roland Groeneveld, both 49, started their computer company as Logic Supply in 2003 in a one-bedroom apartment in Boston. Now called OnLogic, it is based in South Burlington with facilities in Taiwan, the Netherlands, Malaysia and North Carolina. They employ 200 people and have just reached $100 million in sales.
They are also in the permit process to build a new, $50 million,125,000-square-foot corporate headquarters, which will include a production facility for the assembly of their rugged computers as well as a warehouse and shipping component to handle the growing demand.
They've come a long way from that small city apartment awash in cartons and with a manufacturing facility in the kitchen.
For most of us, computers come with screens and keyboards. OnLogic is different.
“We design and manufacture industrial computers,” said Lisa Groeneveld. “Think of a warehouse, with the need to automate stuff. Customers like that want computers that are small. They want to put the computer in a place that they're never going to have to go and grab it again. Ideally, they put the computer in its spot and they don't look at it for another 10 years. That's not your typical computer, but it's an example of one of ours.”
The companies that have fueled OnLogic's phenomenal growth are some of the biggest in the world.
For example:
NASA uses its hardware in their planetary rovers.
At the beginning of the COVID pandemic, General Motors started building badly needed ventilators and reached out to OnLogic for help testing the devices.
For General Dynamics, they've helped create a network security device for their customers.
Goodyear uses their computers for automation on the manufacturing line.
Sunkist uses their hardware in a product that scans and sorts oranges after they're picked for size and ripeness.
Universal Studio's theme parks uses their scanning technology.
And they can't describe what they do for Google and Amazon because of nondisclosure agreements.
Roland Groeneveld is an electrical engineer.
His wife's degrees are in business and marketing.
In 2003 the couple were living in Boston, but they also had a small home on Lake Eden in the Northeast Kingdom to be near Lisa's recently widowed mother.
Roland was musing about finding a way to turn on the heat at Lake Eden from their apartment in the city, so it would be warm when the couple arrived after the four-and-a-half-hour drive. He became interested in motherboards imported from Asia.
“I remember,” Lisa said. “One day Roland came to me and said, 'Lisa, there are these small motherboards that go inside computers. And they're manufactured in Asia. And I think we can sell them in the United States.' And I was like, 'Sounds like a cool idea.' And so Roland set up an e-commerce website. We imported the motherboards. I worked to bring in money to finance it, and Roland ran the business.”
Roland's goal was to build sturdy systems for specialized applications.
“But we also realized that we didn't have the resources to do that right away,” Roland said. “So we dialed quite back and started very, very simple. That's kind of been the way we have operated as a company.”
The idea was to innovate rather than invent.
“We're not inventors,” Lisa said. “We're innovators. Inventing is hard. It's a super heavy lift. Innovating around awesome preexisting ideas is difficult, but it's more doable. And that's how we got the business going.”
From the start, the company was profitable.
“And we've always been profitable,” Roland said. “The idea is to reinvest the profits of the company to build and have more skill sets and more resources. So now we have electrical engineers, we have mechanical engineers, we have people that do certifications. Now we're building all these systems which we are designing from scratch. So what we started with is very different from where we are right now. We've really evolved over time as a company.”
The state knows how lucky it is to have OnLogic here, said Joan Goldstein, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Economic Development.
“They finance themselves, but they have qualified for the Vermont Employment Growth Incentive (VEGI) a few times,” she said. “That's good because they are a very exciting company. It's really hard to believe that a company would reach $100 million worth of revenue in South Burlington.
“Also, if you ask anybody on the street if Vermont builds computers, I'm not sure the answer would be yes.”
Vermont wants to keep them here, Goldstein said.
“They're an example of a great company to work for,” she said. “And they're growing by leaps and bounds. Vermonters should be aware that this is a manufacturing company in Vermont. A company that continues to grow in Vermont. And we can't take that for granted. We're grateful that they're here and that they continue to choose to grow here.”
Another Vermonter who wants to make sure OnLogic remains in Vermont is Thomas Chittenden, senior lecturer at the University of Vermont's Grossman School of Business who is also a neighbor of the Groenevelds, as well as the representative for their district in the Legislature. He uses the company as an example of how his students can have world-class careers and remain in Vermont at the same time.
“I'm always excited to tell students about opportunities in Vermont, and the first one that always comes to mind is OnLogic,” Chittenden said. “They are an internationally based organization. They are growing. It's great that such a remarkable organization is headquartered right here in Vermont. Students can start thinking locally about high-tech, global, world-class employment.”
One reason for OnLogic's success is that Lisa and Roland balance each other, Chittenden said.
“They both have the technical skills and the people skills,” Chittenden said. “They complement each other's approach to the business very, very well. They also have a world-class view. They've taken what you would see in Silicon Valley, California, and put it right here in Vermont. Instead of a valley, they're creating a Silicon Forest.”
Chittenden praised their commitment to community.
“The word 'community' has so many different contexts,” he said. “I see them as being community-oriented in a global context, in a national context, in a state context, in a municipal context, and even in a neighborhood context.
They recognize businesses as a part of society and so they are a part of the communities they operate in, in a very socially and thoughtful manner.”
In the wider world, OnLogic is known for innovation, said Dorin Vanderjack, vice president and general manager of the sales and marketing group at Intel.
“They started that business from a closet in an apartment and grew it into a very successful business,” Vanderjack said. “They did that because they were very astute about trends and where things were moving and finding niches to service, and so adept at adapting to the changing needs of their market. They build a very high-quality edge device with services running on top.”
OnLogic is known for innovation in the market known as the “internet of things.”
“Lisa and Roland have great innovation,” Vanderjack said. “The internet of things is a popular umbrella for describing devices that are connected and perform functions that deliver data in different industries. This segment delivers devices that run services and applications purpose-built for industry verticals, like industrial, automotive, and health care. As the movement and usage of data has migrated from cloud (centralized) to edge (decentralized), the need for real-time data analytics and workload placement has grown. This is the edge! OnLogic has built a very successful business to augment this trend. Intel and OnLogic have worked together on multiple of those solutions to deliver those solutions to customers.”
OnLogic is very attuned to its customers, Vanderjack said.
“Lisa and Roland seek to truly understand the customer issues first,” he said. “Being the company's founders, they always consider solving problems from an 'owners' perspective.' If it doesn't work out of the box, and if it isn't complete, then it isn't a solution OnLogic will deliver.”
Lisa has sat on the Intel Channel Board of Advisors for the last three years. The board's function is to “provide a forum for appointed members to contribute insight and advice to Intel regarding product technologies and programs; using a best-in-class industry model, this diverse group of channel leaders engages in a two-way dialog.”
Among topics of discussion are market trends, opportunities for strategic technology investments, and insights into the growth of Intel.
“On the board Lisa is candid, transparent and inclusive,” Vanderjack said. “Her comments are always well thought through and always come with a solution, not just a problem. Lisa is quick to participate and help with the work and is a huge advocate for moving the internet of things business forward. Her contributions have been exemplary.”
The company the Groenevelds have created is progressive. Its core value system is contained in four phrases: “Be open. Be fair. Be independent. Be innovative.”
Photo: Lisa and Roland Groeneveld, co-founders of OnLogic. Photo: Baldwin Photography.
“One of the first things Roland and I did to set this on its path is sit down together and say, 'What kind of company would we want to work for?'” Lisa said. “Because we had already had a decade of business experience behind us. And the first thing we did was figure out our core values, which is who we are — but also who we aren't.
“For example, we're not a perks-based company. We're not a company where back-office dealings are OK. We're very open. And we're fair. And we're independent, and we're innovative. We're maybe not a place everybody wants to work for. But we are at least the place we want to work for. And now we have 200 people and, I believe, our team continues to carry the culture on their shoulders.”
When OnLogic's customers visit the company, they're walked through the offices.
“And I invariably hear, 'Wow, everyone's smiling!'” Lisa said. “And I'm like, of course they are. They've got each other. That's not always true at every place.”
The company has an open-book policy, for example, so anyone in the company can learn what their colleagues earn. As a policy, it cuts down on company drama, Lisa said.
“Anyone can go to a Google document to see what their colleagues are making, including Roland and me,” Lisa said. “A lot of people might say, 'Well, that's weird. Why should everybody know what everyone else is making?' But if everyone knows what their colleague is making, they don't have to think about whether or not they're being treated fairly. It doesn't mean everybody always likes their salary. It simply means they can ask. It means we can talk about it. It means no one gets in trouble for wondering if they're being treated right by the people around them. When you eliminate all of that sort of drama, your team works faster and harder because they can feel good about each other.“
The big idea here is to hire intelligent people and give them the information they need to make good decisions.
“We've come to find out that they'll collaborate, they'll work together,” Lisa said. “And if you put three people in a room to talk about how to fix a problem at OnLogic, they all have the information they need at their fingertips, and they will make good decisions. And they will ask for help if they need to ask for help. So it accelerates our business.”
Lisa is from Barre; her parents owned The Cobbler's Shoppe in Montpelier for decades. Roland is from the Netherlands, where his parents own a large chain of optical shops. They met in Europe in 1999, when they were both working in IT.
“I worked for an American telecom company called WorldCom and Roland was my customer,” Lisa said. “We met on the airplane on the way to Munich for a customer appreciation outing that my company was doing for all of our customers. So we met on the way to Munich for Oktoberfest. And then on the flight home, he maneuvered himself next to me on the airplane. Then he asked me if I want to go bike riding, because that's what Dutch people do. And that was the beginning of our romance. I like to joke that I closed that particular deal.”
Lisa thinks entrepreneurship runs in both families.
“I remember stories about Roland's dad,” Lisa said. “He was a very hands-on person. He drove around the Netherlands visiting every one of their stores pretty much every week, and they had probably 100 stores. It's kind of nice when we go there and see the stores. They still have the name on them. And our kids get to see that, too.”
Lisa's upbringing was similar.
“Dinnertime was always about what's going on at the store, and who came in today,” Lisa said. “My dad and mom were in Montpelier, so they met all the coolest people. They knew Senator Leahy. All the governors would come in and get their shoes fixed. You don't think about it when you're a kid, and then, all of a sudden, one day you're like, 'Wait, did I just start a business?'”
As a couple, Roland and Lisa are both “incredibly intelligent and smart,” said Johnny Illick, CEO of ReArch Company, the development, building construction, and property management company that will build OnLogic's new headquarters in Technology Park near the Whales Tails sculpture, across I-89 from its current location.
Roland is deeply involved in the new building.
“He's incredibly analytical and a shrewd negotiator,” Illick said. “He's always willing to lend his opinion, which I think is wonderful. And he knows what he wants. It's refreshing to work with an owner that has those traits, because he's very engaged, very involved, working closely with the engineers and the design team. He's at all the job meetings. There are many owners that we work with who aren't familiar with the construction process. Oftentimes, they hire an owner's representative to kind of represent them. Roland's not like that. He rolls up his sleeves and is very much involved.”
The new building will facilitate production.
“The layout we have now is not super handy for building computers and getting them out the door,” Lisa said. “So the new facility is really designed to be able to produce many, many, many more computers than we're producing right now. And that's good news for Vermont, and also for the city itself.”
One of the reasons it's good news is that OnLogic offers high-value jobs.
The starting salary is $45,000 and the average runs around $100,000. And approximately 130 employees now own shares in the company.
Not surprisingly, OnLogic's new building will be environmentally state-of-the-art. It will feature a large rooftop solar array, geothermal heating/cooling, and EV charging stations. It will be pedestrian- and bike-friendly, with landscaping and views of the mountains.
Recently, South Burlington removed 1,000 of its acres from future development. This will not affect the OnLogic project.
“We don't expect the recent decision by the South Burlington City Council, which approved regulations that would prevent development on about 1,000 acres in the city’s southeast quadrant, to directly impact the impending construction of our new Vermont headquarters,” Lisa said. “However, that doesn't mean it won't impact OnLogic. Our team struggles to find affordable homes near the office and this decision only exacerbates those challenges.”
Once the new building is finished, OnLogic's current building might be leased or rented out some day. But not right away.
“We might hold on to it and lease it out for a while,” Roland said. “Depending on how fast we grow. And we are continuing to grow very fast. Typically, we've been growing about 25 percent to 30 percent a year. The last two years we've been growing by about 35 percent. So we may need to use both facilities as we grow. It will take almost two years before the new facility is done. And already Lisa and I are in another location, not in our main office. We've rented some additional space in other buildings to support the size of the company.”
Illick, who is also a personal friend of the Groenevelds, praised Lisa for her dedication to the community.
“Lisa is always in the Statehouse, pushing for new legislation,” Illick said. “From net neutrality to other things. She's one of the biggest-hearts person that I've ever seen. She's so genuinely nice. She cares about absolutely everybody who is around her, both in and out of the workplace. When we go out to dinner, she talks a lot about her employees and how she really connects with each and every one of them and kind of takes them under her wing. She is the leader, but also the mother figure who can really help them with something that might be going on outside of the workplace.”
Lisa's community involvement has led her to sit on many boards. Currently, she is on the boards of Mascoma Bank, the Center for Women & Enterprise, Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies and the Center on Rural Innovation.
Gwen Pokalo, senior director of the Center for Women & Enterprise, first met Lisa at a panel presentation at OnLogic and was taken with Lisa's take on women in technology.
“It was a discussion about how to build a more inclusive workplace for women,” Pokalo said. “Lisa was on the panel. And she said something that really made me think. She said, 'I'm sick of always being the token woman on the tech panel, the technical business panels and the CEO panels, and yet I know I have to be here to represent.' It really made me think. So about a year ago we asked her to join the Center for Women & Enterprise's advisory board. And it has been a fantastic experience, getting to know her and having the opportunity to benefit from her leadership.”
Lisa brings to the board “candor, a sense of humor and a total prowess for strategic thinking and planning,” Pokalo said.
“Also it's her ability to work with people — just to be a person with people and be human — that was really impressive to me,” Pokalo said. “I just fell in love with her passion and her enthusiasm and her authenticity. I think our community got expanded as a result of Lisa. She's very clear that she's a part of our community.”
Early Lives
Lisa, who has three brothers, grew up in her parents' cobbler shop.
“My dad was a cobbler and kind of a handyman,” she said, “Roland is a lot like my dad — very good with tools and fixing things. And yeah, a cheerful guy.”
Lisa started working in the shop at a young age, sweeping and straightening up.
“When I was seven years old, my father would kind of nudge me into the front of the store to wait on customers that he knew well,” she said. “He'd stand a few feet behind me. And I'd say, 'Can I help you?' and it would be one of the state legislators. They'd look at my dad, and then they'd look at me and be like, 'I need my shoes fixed.' I probably was very delightful to the customers because I was so cute and shy. Or I was a giant pain in the butt. I'm not quite sure.”
Roland comes from an area around Rotterdam, in Holland. His father was an optician as well as an entrepreneur.
“My dad was actually one of the first people who brought contact lenses from the US into the Netherlands,” Roland said. “He traveled to the US a lot when I was a kid, which was actually pretty cool. But it's the same thing as what Lisa was talking about. If your parents have a business, they put you to work. But instead of anything glamorous, mine put me to work in the warehouse, lifting boxes and moving stuff around.”
Lisa went to Northeastern University, where she earned a bachelor's science degree in business administration, marketing and international business.
“I knew that I would be financially self-sufficient with a business degree,” Lisa said. “It took a lot of student loans to get through college. I didn't want to come out of college and not be able to pay off my student loans.”
Lisa was already focused on an international career when she chose Northeastern.
“Northeastern has the co-op program,” she said. “So I did my first year of college in Switzerland. I did an international co-op in France, and an international co-op in the Netherlands for AT&T. When I came out of college, I went into IT. Then, when I was 28 years old, I had an opportunity with the company I was working for in the United States to work internationally. And so I chose the Netherlands because I'd already been there once.”
Roland took a four-year degree in electrical engineering and computer science in the Netherlands.
“Back then, things weren't quite the same as they are in the US,” he said. “But it's kind of a four-year degree.”
After they met, the couple lived in the Netherlands together and pursued their careers. Roland managed IT for a large company while Lisa worked for a telecom company selling internet services. Things changed for them drastically in 2002, when Lisa's father died.
“That was the point at which Roland and I moved back to the United States,” Lisa said. “Dad died unexpectedly. And I really felt I needed to come home and kind of keep an eye on my mom and my brothers, because we're a really tight family and we took it really hard. And so Roland, who'd never been more than probably 45 minutes away from his parents, just picked up sticks and moved to the United States with me overnight.”
It literally was overnight.
“We called Roland's dad and said, 'You need to sell everything,'” Lisa said. “And his mom and dad rallied and really helped us out. They tightened everything up in the Netherlands, and in a weekend we were back in the US. It was really traumatic. When I think about how traumatic that time was, I couldn't have done it without my guy. Sorry, I get a little emotional. You always miss your parents.”
Lisa's mother now lives with the Groenevelds.
The couple were married in Barre in July of 2002. They have two children: Lily is 17 and Sander is 15.
Starting The Company
One of the first things the Groenevelds did after moving back to the US was build a little house on Lake Eden in the Northeast Kingdom, next to Lisa's parents' cabin.
“And then we ran out of money,” Lisa said. “So we went back to Boston, to my original network, and I got a job down there.”
That's when Roland grew interested in the small motherboards from Asia and in heating a home in Vermont from an apartment in Boston.
“I had been interested in computers my whole life,” Roland said.
“And I had this idea — can I do automation with computers beyond what was possible at that point? And the thinking was, if I can find a small computer that can control different things around the house, that would be nice to try. And as I looked at that — and this was kind of just a personal interest at that point — I realized you can do a little more. You can automate factory processes and stuff like that.”
“When you think about it, we started this company in 2003, and computers were these big things that sat on your desk,” Lisa said. “And laptops get stolen, and they have fragile components, like screens. If you want to put a computer somewhere just to do stuff, you didn't want to use a big computer because it took too much space. You didn't want to use a laptop because someone's going to steal it or break the screen. You don't need a screen, and you don't need a keyboard; all you need is the computer thing. And that was Roland's thinking.”
Once Roland started exploring the idea, he decided that other people and companies might have similar needs.
“That's how it started,” Roland said. “Identifying a need and then realizing that companies will have the same need for a very, very small computer to just put in a little space and have the ability to control other devices or things.”
The technology was available, but Roland was using it in a different way.
Photo: OnLogic computers. Photo courtesy OnLogic.
“There was nothing like it available here in the US,” Roland said. “It was available in Asia, but you couldn't really get it over here. So we imported everything and started to sell it here.”
“Roland and I were the first to conceive of how putting them all together could really resonate with a businessperson in the United States,” Lisa said. “We took the ingredients, we put them all together, and we made it easy for people who needed it to find it, buy it and get it quickly. We made it affordable. And we made it make sense to the end user. So we didn't invent anything. We innovated all the way to the end user. And innovation is one of our core values.”
Starting the business took a great leap of faith.
“Roland and I are both IT professionals,” Lisa said. “I have a sales and marketing background. He has a technical background. We looked at each other and said, 'Well, let's just see how this goes.' And one day I wrote a check for $80,000 to a company in Asia. A company I've never met face-to-face. And it came right out of my savings account. I was like, 'How do I know you're gonna send me this stuff?' And our business partner said, 'If I don't send it to you, everyone's going to find out I took $80,000 and didn't send you computers. At a certain point, Lisa, you just have to trust the process. You send me the money, I send you the computers.' So he sent me the motherboards and I sent him $80,000. It was the hardest check I've ever written in my whole life. It was terrifying. And that's how we started the business.”
Things took off quickly.
“So there we were in our little apartment in Boston, about 1,300 square feetfull of boxes,” Lisa said. “I had a rule, no boxes in the bedroom. But there were literally boxes everywhere else. Our landlords were such a sweet couple. They were like, 'OK, but you can't have these 18-wheelers blocking this neighborhood road.' I think they were happy when we moved.”
They began the business in June, and by December both of the Groenevelds were working in it.
“It had quickly evolved into something more,” Roland said. “We were really focused on the idea of very small computers for automation. And it wasn't just motherboards. It was everything related to that. We built little computers for customers in our kitchen. And from there on, we really started to focus on industrial markets — where customers would need these computers for automating production processes like factory automation, warehouse automation and those kinds of things.”
In February of 2004 they moved the business to Waterbury and took up residence in Lake Eden. They moved the business and the family to South Burlington in 2007.
Doing Business In Vermont
The Vermont Economic Development Authority played a large part in helping the Groenevelds start their business here.
“My mom was struggling after losing Dad,” Lisa said. “We were in Boston. So I called Vermont. I picked up the phone, dialed some numbers, some dude answered the phone, and he's like, 'Oh, you're thinking of moving your business up here? Let me help.” And that was VEDA. I found them at, I think, vermont.gov. He helped us find our space. He put us in touch with other people from the state. These other people from the state came in and told us how they could help our business.”
The move was much easier than the Groenevelds expected. This surprised Lisa.
“Growing up in Vermont, I did not think Vermont was a place where people came to work,” she said. “In Vermont, you either work in the ski resorts or you run a little business, but it was not a place I ever thought I would be able to stay. When I graduated from high school, I left fast. Coming back up here, I realized how wrong I was.”
The state of Vermont has always been supportive.
“Even when we were literally nobody,” Lisa said, “Massachusetts would have never picked up a phone call from me. Vermont was like, 'Hey, you want the governor at your ribbon cutting when you open your new building?' And Governor Douglas came! And I was like, 'Oh, my God, how can you waste your time with us?' He was like, 'This isn't a waste of time.' So our experience with the state of Vermont has been fantastic.”
OnLogic customers are all over the world, but the internet makes it simple to order computers online.
“I always thought that we were doing well despite the fact that Vermont is very rural,” Lisa said. “But we are an e-commerce company. So our customers order things online. And we put it on a truck, and it leaves the state. We're kind of end of the line here in the northeast corner of the United States. Most warehouses are located in Kentucky and Pennsylvania — places more central to the US.”
Being in Vermont meant that OnLogic could grow and still be under the radar.
Photo: OnLogic's facility in South Burlington. Photo: Courtesy OnLogic.
“Our industry is largely based in Asia,” Lisa said. “And in the US, in the West. Because we're here, no one took us seriously in our industry until suddenly we broke out. So Vermont really helped us stealthily grow and prosper to a point where we're big enough now that we're being noticed, and we're too big to be crushed by the competition. So in that sense, now that we're where we are at right now, I can look back and say there are a lot of businesses growing and thriving in Vermont. And their industries don't even really realize they're here. And then suddenly, they're big. And suddenly their industry is like, 'Whoa, what just happened? And where are these people located?'”
This makes Vermont a formidable place
to start a business, Lisa said.
“If you have the courage to do it,” she said, “it'll teach you how to keep your belt tight. It'll teach you how to be fast and nimble. Sometimes you have to make more out of less. But if you can make it in Vermont, absolutely you'll kill it in your industry. And I only realized that now, looking back. I didn't know that at the time.”
OnLogic already has a global focus, Roland said.
“We're in Vermont, but we sell everywhere in the world,” Roland said. “Early on, we added an office in Taiwan where a lot of our suppliers are located. So we have the real competitive advantage of being right where the manufacturers of a lot of our components are located. We added an office in the Netherlands about 10 years ago for supporting the European businesses there. And we've recently opened an office in North Carolina, because we can find people there who have certain technical skill sets that are just hard to find in Vermont. Vermont is a wonderful place, but it has its limitations. So we work around that.”
North Carolina provides people who have a more technical skill set for the sales and engineering roles, Roland said.
“For the people who love Vermont and the Vermont lifestyle, it's easy to get them to want to move here,” Lisa said. “But Vermont is cold and pretty snowy. North Carolina lets us have the ability to say to applicants, 'You can come to Vermont, or you can go to North Carolina.' So we've got a warm spot, we've got a cold spot, and we figured that covers it. We also have an engineering office in Malaysia.”
A Few Dark Moments
When setting up their European office, the Groenevelds encountered problems that made it difficult to be far away.
“If your readers take anything away from this, they should take the very practical advice that if you're going to start a remote office, make sure you really get your ducks in a row,” Lisa said. “Our European office was probably one of the hardest, hardest lessons we ever learned. We started the business with two business partners who were not aligned with our culture. And were not aligned with each other. We actually had to go over there — Roland and I and our two kids — to help get them off the bus and out of the business, set the business back up on the rails, and make sure that the culture was well established, so that everybody on the team felt good about what they were doing in Europe. Because the European team did not feel good about themselves.”
This problem probably cost the company millions of dollars, Lisa said.
“And we ended up moving to Europe for a couple years, with the whole family, to fix that,” Roland said.
Also, OnLogic has introduced new products that failed.
Lisa said she learned from Rich Tarrant of IDX that when that happens, you “quit quick.”
“We've launched products that have absolutely failed,” she said. “And one thing we've learned as a team is not to get emotional about the fact that that particular product launch is not going well.
“If it's not going well, then pull the plug, regroup, figure out what went wrong, and go do the next product launch better. We've lost money doing that.
“But the positive side is that we've learned to commit to each other as human beings, not to a product or thing. That's not where the emotion comes from. It's from this whole team looking at each other and saying, 'We gave it our best. Here are the mistakes we made. Here's what we're gonna do better next time.' Just pull the plug and move on, and no one feels bad about each other. No one feels like they're being blamed.”
Management Style
Company culture is very important to the Groenevelds. It's the reason they have an open-book policy and offer good benefits — the same benefits are available to all the employees, including the Groenevelds — and a choice of livable weather patterns.
Making OnLogic a good place to work is critical to its success.
“Roland and I are now two of 200,” Lisa said. “Carrying OnLogic forward is a team effort. People want to come to work with people who are ready to get the job done, but also people who are friendly. It seems so obvious and straightforward.”
They wanted to create a team that worked well together, Roland said.
“And if you get that going, where every member of the team adds value, and collaborates with others, then everything starts to fall in place by itself,” he said. “Otherwise you end up running around having to tell people what to do all the time. You don't want to do that. As managers, you want to really get an environment where everybody knows what they want to do. They're the ones that come up with the ideas. So you don't have to do it all yourself.”
Creating a good place to work means even more when a company is constantly recruiting.
Lisa said one of the reasons she and Roland were cooperating for this story is the hope it will attract new job-seekers.
Right now, the company has more than 20 open positions in South Burlington and 56 across the company.
“My big hope is that we'll get a bunch of applicants,” she said. “Frankly, we can't hire fast enough. And when we build the new facility, and we're able to build two and three and four times as many computers, we're going to need a lot more hands. That's why we pay well, and that's why we treat our employees according to the core values.”
Lisa referenced the start of the pandemic, when the company got a call from General Motors.
“They said 'We're building ventilators, and we need computers to test these ventilators once they're assembled to make sure they work’,” Lisa said. “They needed 100 computers in five days. And our assembly team — in the middle of COVID — made sure that our customers were serviced. Our entire operations team instituted COVID protocols, but they came in and they did the work they needed to do because they knew they were contributing to the well-being of fellow Americans. I get a little emotional when I think about it.”
Founders Flop
The Groenevelds have even found a fix for Founder's Syndrome, Founder's Dilemma, or founderitis, different terms that describe the point at which a company has grown larger than the managerial competence of its founders, yet the founders won't let go of the reins.
The Groenevelds solution?
They gave up running the company. They are both founders, co-owners and run the board, but the CEO is now Sean Larkin.
“He's been with the company for about 10 years,” Roland said. “He started originally as the CFO of the company, then became the president and he is now the CEO. So he gets to manage, and Lisa and I both get to do stuff that we really want to work on. He runs pretty much the whole operation at this point.”
The Founder's Trap, as Lisa calls it, comes when a founder has the idea that the company can only operate when they're in charge.
This, it has been proved time and again, is not necessarily true.
“Roland and I have always run OnLogic as business professionals who just happen to be married,” Lisa said. “And in our mind, OnLogic is not our business so much as an ongoing corporate concern. So in order to really grow in scale, Roland and I can't be the limiting factors.
“Roland was an amazing CEO, and could be again, but it always made sense to us to ensure that there's business continuity. That way OnLogic can continue to thrive, regardless of the existence of the Groeneveld couple.”
Photo: Lisa and Roland Groeneveld, co-founders of OnLogic. Photo: Baldwin Photography.
Future
The Groenevelds are still very much part of the company.
“We're proud that our team still wants us involved in the business,” Lisa said. “We still have a lot of responsibilities.”
Roland is responsible for the expansion of OnLogic.
“My focus is right now primarily on the new building here in Vermont, but we're also building a new building in the Netherlands, as well,” Roland said. “And we're renting a new space in Taiwan. So I'm coordinating all of those things. That's my primary focus. But for the other side of what I do, I'm very heavily involved in the design of every computer. So I'm always there when we come up with a new requirement — what does the computer need to do? What does it look like? Then we have a great team who actually makes it happen.”
Lisa works closely with OnLogic's sales team.
“I'm also part of the recruiting efforts here,” she said. “I'm probably one of the reasons we get so many resumes, because I'm out and I'm talking to people in the community, and encouraging people to apply every single day. So my role is pretty diffuse. And then I'll come in and empty the dishwashers. You know, when you're running a business you do everything. You kind of go where you're needed.”
She is also representing the company in the larger world, which is why she serves on so many boards.
“For Intel Corporation, the big processor company, I'm sort of the voice of the market for them,” Lisa said. “I'm on the board of directors of Mascoma Bank because you don't just run a business in a vacuum. And my primary responsibility now is to ensure that OnLogic is giving back our skills into the community to help elevate other businesses. I bring my OnLogic hat to all of my board activities.”
Lisa also has a second company, Tolmee (according to Google, Tolmee in Greek means “showing a willingness to take risks; confident and courageous”) that imports craft and jewelry items from Greece.
“My absolute best and closest friends from college are Greek American,” Lisa said. “They live in Boston. We always said, if we ever could, we would import beautiful things from Greece to America. My business partner is Christos Gerontidis, and he is running Tolmee in Boston. It's very small and just a passion project for us, so no employees. He works at Tufts Health Plan. Now that Tolmee is all set up, I only spend a few hours a month on it. Christos does all the marketing, artist relationships and operations. It's very small but we're having so much fun. Unfortunately we can't travel to Greece due to the pandemic, so that is a major challenge for us.”
The Groenevelds are adamant that they will not take the company public.
“Maybe after we're dead something like that might happen,” Lisa joked.
“There's no reason to do it,” Roland said. “We don't need any money. We're very self-sufficient. We've been able to grow the business rapidly while funding it ourselves, and we have no external investors.”
OnLogic is set on a growth path no matter what happens, the Groenevelds say.
“If anything happened to either of us, you would still be writing articles about OnLogic in five years,” Lisa said. “It would still be here. So one of our proudest accomplishments is the fact that OnLogic doesn't need us in order to be successful.”
“And as long as we're having fun, we'll keep doing this,” Roland said.
Joyce Marcel is a journalist in southern Vermont. In 2017 she was named the best business magazine profile writer in the country by the Alliance of Area Business Publishers.. She is married to Randy Holhut, the photographer who took the photos for this story. He is also the news editor/acting operations manager of The Commons, a weekly newspaper in Brattleboro.
