Inside the mind of a crazy (rich) entrepreneur
Scott
Jones thinks up more ideas in a month than most folks do in a lifetime.
Find out how he makes them pay. Photographs by Chris Mueller/Redux.
Most folks in the Indianapolis suburb of Carmel know Scott Jones as
"the guy who invented voicemail." In the early '90s Jones made about
$50 million on his company, which created the predominate form of
voicemail, and he "retired" at age 31. Over the past two decades this
driven inventor has been generating ideas for new products and
companies - some were successful, others hit the scrap heap - at a pace
that would make Thomas Edison's head spin.
Jones's latest company, ChaCha, is developing a potential rival to Google - a search engine assisted by human experts who will help you find your answer.
Jones likes to bike as he scans data from eight computer screens.
There's no desk in Jones's office. Instead, he designed a recumbent
bike that seats him in front of eight flat-panel monitors, all
connected to a CPU. The bike allows him to exercise while he works and
think more creatively by having many documents and websites visible
simultaneously. Jones has been known to bike for three hours at a time,
sweat streaming, while he works. "I've done board meetings there with a
phone, and people wonder why I'm panting," he notes.
Jones carmel, ind., home, with its own it staff is his idea lab
Jones spent seven years and $20 million renovating his house in Carmel,
Ind. The home features a 33-foot-high great room, an indoor tree house,
a circular mahogany slide connecting two floors, a 25-foot-long
saltwater aquarium, two waterfalls in the master bathroom, a separate
indoor basketball court, and a full-scale cast of a T. rex skull.
Jones gets inspiration from watching flicks in his 20-seat home theater
Many entrepreneurs describe their great ideas as a lightning bolt of
inspiration, but to hear Jones tell it, he's prone to frequent
thunderstorms. "All of a sudden I can't sleep, and I have all these
ideas that are unrelated to each other," he describes. "I just spew
them on the page, and it feels like I'm channeling from somewhere else."
Jones, with his victrola, plays ideas over and over until he finds a unique product.
Jones's life is choreographed to squeeze every possible cerebral moment
from the day. He sleeps six hours and 45 minutes a night and not a
minute more. (After studying his sleep patterns, he determined that to
be the magic number for maximum productivity.) His day is scheduled to
the minute by his chief of staff, Maggie Kauer, 56. "Precision" and
"procedure" are two words she uses often.
Inspirational items.
Jones's stuff gives him ideas. Clockwise from top left: an acupuncture
model, TV wiring, owl vomit, vacuum tubes, a solar system, and a
microscope. For reasons he can't determine, creative moments often
happen on airplanes. "A lot of the ideas in my file cabinet were
written on the backs of barf bags," he says.
Jones the inventor likes to stuff his office with oscilloscopes, signal generators, solar ovens, and any other gadget that helps him tinker.
On the third floor of Jones's home, a thumbprint scanner unlocks the
door to his inner sanctum. A spiral staircase leads to his attic office
suite, where he typically works until two or three in the morning. In
it, he has a room with whiteboards floor to ceiling - and even on the
ceiling - where he works out the details of his brainstorms. The suite
also includes a room piled high with such gear as a signal generator,
an oscilloscope, and a solar oven.
summer intern sarah mcclamroch takes a slide in jones's house.
Summer intern Sarah McClamroch takes a slide in Jones's house. To get
his creative juices flowing, Jones often engages in bizarre behavior:
eating without utensils, watching TV a foot away from the screen.
"Anything I normally do, I'll do it differently just to see what
happens," he says.
Read more on Scott Jones:
How a great inventor works: Full story
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