Private sector grabs state tech leader.

• Author: Schwab, Robert
• Position: On Colorado

CALL IT ANOTHER JOB LOST TO THE crashing Colorado tech economy. But John Hansen, former Colorado secretary of technology, wasn't laid off like a lot of people were from the tech industry over the past few years.

A successful tech entrepreneur, Hansen took advantage of a new opportunity in his former home state, Washington, and is now chief executive officer of WatchMark Corp., a $30 million to $40 million software maker in Bellevue, a suburb of Seattle.

WatchMark, Hansen said, makes software that helps manage wireless networks for customers like AT&T Wireless or Verizon.

The company has about 275 employees, Hansen said. He took the job Jan. 28 and he's already enjoying being back in the role of a private company's "benevolent dictator" vs. playing government bureaucrat.

Hansen was founder, chairman and CEO of another Seattle tech company whose buyout by a bigger firm gave Hansen the wherewithal to work for Colorado for three years at a salary of a buck a year. $1. Oh, for the days of the big-money tech buyouts.

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You may or may not have heard about Hansen's rather abrupt departure from his cabinet-level post.

It was briefly reported and barely explained in the newspapers, which did mention that Leroy Williams, the state's chief information officer, would take over the secretary's position. At least one job in state government was truly lost, however, because Williams is doing double duty still as chief information officer.

What wasn't reported in the papers was the disbanding of the Colorado Innovation and Technology Corp., a nonprofit funnel for privately raised money that helped support the governor's Technology Summit and other events and salaried positions devoted to promoting state government's high-tech economic-development agenda.

Legislative budget cuts--Hansen said the Governor's Office of Innovation and Technology was cut back 38 percent for this fiscal year--put...