Distinguished Alumni : John Buttery

John Buttery on McGuire students’ 2004 business-plan presentations: “They are very, very well done. Technology has helped improve them over the years, but the students have great business and presentation skills.”

Lifelong Entrepreneur’s New Company Is Picturesque

John Buttery says he likes “the atmosphere and the students” in the McGuire Entrepreneurship Program.

Evidently. Two of his companies—BLR Data, which he founded in 1992, and SkiView, sold last year—have been loyal sponsors of the program’s annual business-plan competition. Buttery has been honored as an Entrepreneurial Fellow and inducted into the Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame. He’s judged McGuire competitions, hired McGuire interns, and generally been an unwearying McGuire booster since he graduated from the program with an MBA in 1989.

Now Buttery has started a new company, Ventana Pintar, which creates artwork for use in large, primarily commercial spaces such as hotels and casinos. To produce the artwork, he starts with a photograph and the technology to enlarge it and print it on a canvas. The finished product “almost looks hand-painted,” says Buttery.

Buttery found success with BLR Data when he was still in his twenties. Of course, he’d been an entrepreneur since early childhood, when on weekends he dug up and sold worms for bait in his native Wisconsin.

Even then he knew the value of strategic partnerships (getting referrals from bait stores) and human resources (he hired his mom and sister). Still, he had plenty left to learn in the McGuire Entrepreneurship Program, lessons that have only been reinforced by experience: among them, know your customers, listen to them, and develop high-quality products that meet their needs.

Applying those precepts, Buttery and two McGuire interns developed the idea for Ventana Pintar and wrote the business plan. The company’s first catalog is in production and will be distributed this fall.

  
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