How not to sell yourself short by Fred Baca: Houston, Texas

Latino Leaders: The National Magazine of the Successful American Latino, Feb-March, 2002 by Conrad Fox

Fred Baca always knew he'd be big. This giant of the Houston real estate scene brims with an infectious self-confidence, an optimism you can hear in his voice. And if, at 5'4", he is a head shorter than your average entrepreneur, he turns even this into a positive thing. "Picture me in a crowd of successful people," he says gleefully. "I stand out!"

Baca may be vertically challenged, but the Guatemalan-born ex-paratrooper has made a career out of turning challenges into opportunities. You may have to be a realtor to appreciate just how he brought the industry into the information age, turning a dusty pile of court records into a comprehensive database of transaction information. You only need to share the American dream to appreciate his irrepressible entrepreneurial spirit. "Opportunity abounds in this country," he says. "If an opportunity exists and I can see it, it's almost a sacred duty to develop it."

Growing up in Houston, Baca's ambition was to become a US senator. In 1969, with a first class degree in political science raider his belt and a place al law school awaiting him, his plans were derailed when he was drafted. Volunteering for the 82nd Airborne--a gutsy choice tot a diminutive intellectual--he arrived at training camp to be told by a drill sergeant that he wasn't heavy enough to open a parachute. "This wasn't the kind of chamber of commerce greeting I was expecting," he laughs. "Up to that point, I had always competed on wit and intellect, and I could hold my own. I'd always manipulated things so I could avoid physical extremes. Let me tell you when you go into the paratroopers, the personality doesn't help." Thankfully, the sergeant was wrong. Baca completed his training and went on to perform two years of active service in the United States. "That was probably the most potent part of my upbringing. Knowing that I could compete and excel, nothing could stop me after that."

In 1971 he was discharged and wondered what to do next. "I always liked the idea of working in the information business," he remembers. "I thought it was a classy and elegant way to live." An eccentric belief at a time when the cutting edge of information technology meant liquid paper and acid-free file folders, Baca was not even sure what his business would be. Nevertheless, he decided to target the real estate industry and went down to the county court house to look at documents relating to commercial property transactions. "I went down every day with no preconceived notion of what I was going to find," he recalls, "hut I was convinced that if I exposed myself to it every day, I would come out of it with something."

What he realized was that unsorted, the documents were of no use to anyone. He diligently began organizing them and drawing up a map that detailed millions of commercial land deals in the Houston area. The value was plain to him. "In 1971," he explains, "commercial agents only knew word-of-mouth transactions. They thought they knew everything that was going on in a major metropolitan area. By cataloguing the court records in geographic sequence, I was able to show them transactions outside their known universe." He packaged his information into reports and sent them off to realtors, "sure that people would start paying me for them."

Except they didn't. For two years, Baca's arduous task paid no dividends, and there were those who began to question his wisdom. He recalls, "I was at a party, and someone said to me 'What if this doesn't work?' and I had to sit down because it had never occurred to me." He recovered immediately, however. "I do like recognition," he says, "but I didn't need people to confirm whether I'm right or not. That's tip to me to decide."

Baca was right, of course. The industry began to see the value in a vast database of information that we take for granted today. He explains: "At that time, property was being bought and sold in a process called flipping in order to create artificial value, and one of the things I did was show that values were being artificially stimulated."

His company, Baca Publications, was so successful that by 1989 he had formed another, Baca Landata, that published his data on a digital map called a Geographical Information System. Commonplace today, GIS was a novelty at the time, but Baca immediately sensed that it would be the future of the information business. "I went out and bought a 1.2 gigabyte hard drive which was as big as you could get," he recalls, excited by the memory. "It cost $40,000 and took three days to install. Nowadays they just give them away. I've always been ahead," he admits. "My on-time is being early, and with that comes a lot of pain, but it's incredibly exhilarating."

"One of the things I've noticed about myself is...." Baca searches for words. "To say I'm a creator is terribly arrogant. I'm a builder. Once I reach a certain level, once the acceleration stops and it becomes a maintenance issue, I'm not very good at that." He laughs. "That's a bane, because that's where you can make the money."