SILICON SLOPES: CHARACTER DRIVES BUSINESS, SAYS ROMNEY.

• Author: Christensen, Lisa
• Position: Around Utah

Salt Lake City -- A person's character Is worth more In the business world than just their Ideas, said former Massachusetts governor and presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Speaking at the SILICON SLOPES Tech Summit, Romney recounted his time founding and building Bain Capital from a small venture capital firm to the major financial player It was when he left.

"We never would have imagined it would grow to the extent it has. We put [investors'] interests first, and only invested in something when we thought we could see something not everybody else could see," he said. "If we could only see what everybody else could see, there was no point investing."

To be successful, Romney said he and co-founder Coleman Andrews knew they needed to build a team of people who were smarter than they were and exceptional in some aspect of the business. By taking the team approach, he said, it didn't matter as much if a candidate was weaker in an aspect that was already covered by another employee.

"We decided early on we would not spend a lot of time worrying about people's 'flat spots.' Everybody has flat sides, some part of their total package that just isn't ideal for the marketplace or challenge they're dealing with, but if you spend all of your time working on people's weaknesses, you spend all your time on weaknesses," he said. "We said instead what we're going to do is find people who were extraordinary in some way or another, and then make up for their weaknesses with other members of the team."

Some of their team members were great at finding deals, but less adept at evaluating them; others were gifted analysts but couldn't find funding as well.

"We built a team that was so much better than any one of us could have been, and, of course, collectively so much smarter than Coleman Andrews and I, and I think that's what made us so successful," Romney said.

In deciding which companies they would and would not...