In 1983 Annie Saylor and five of her colleagues founded SimTech, a small business focused on high-tech defense contracts. Originally from eastern Kentucky, Saylor came to Huntsville to teach mathematics at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. However, after just two years, she transitioned into the defense industry and never looked back.

While initially maintaining her technical role at the newly formed SimTech, as a business owner Saylor had an increased interest in the business side of the company. She learned the ins and outs of running a successful government contracting business and was motivated to create a workplace that provided great benefits to employees. When she assumed the role of president in 2012, she aimed to expand the company into new areas. Today, with 185 employees, SimTech boasts more than 40 years experience supporting the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Center (AvMC).

Saylor recently sat down with the Huntsville Business Journal to discuss the growth of SimTech and the challenges of owning a small government contracting business.

What is the history of SimTech and what was your role in starting it?

I am one of the original founders. There were six of us who were there within the Environmental Modeling group. The government goes through cycles on contracting. There’s a cycle where they want big contracts and so they’ll let big ones, and then they’ll go through another cycle where they say, no, we need to break these up and give small businesses a chance. We were fortunate to be in a position where they wanted to make our work a small business contract.

We said, “Hey we’re doing the work so we should just form a business and bid on it,” and that’s how we got started. We were really, really fortunate in that we already knew the people and knew the business and could write the proposal, win it, and start the work.

At the time we were very focused on simulation technologies for Hardware in the Loop, which is still some of our core business. There were two women in the group and four men when we originally started. Three of us had PhDs, so we were just a bunch of geeky folks.

What do you like best about being a business owner?

I like being able to help employees and help people find jobs within SimTech and help them if they’re not happy in one position to find another location within the company. I really like working with the employees. Just recently, I was able to help a young man that I met on a panel somewhere come and apply to SimTech. He just got a job offer and accepted. So it’s nice to be able to help people like that.

What are some obstacles you encountered starting and running this business and how did you overcome them?

One of the things that we must deal with is the changing contract environment. The government will go from large to small and then back again, or they’ll decide to use a different contract vehicle. It means that sometimes we started out as a prime contractor and then as the environment changed, we had to team with other companies to retain our work, but not be prime contractor anymore and be a subcontractor. So, one of the biggest obstacles is being prepared for that next contract wave, what’s the next thing that the government’s going to do and the type of contracts that they want to have and being prepared for that.

What caused you to pursue a career in Mathematics?

When I was growing up there were not many people who were good at it (math), and I enjoyed being good at something that other people weren’t. I like being able to teach it, and I like solving problems. I like that sense that you get when you solve the problem. Of course, life becomes a little bit more complicated, and it’s not like you get the answer in the back of the book anymore. There’s not one answer. But as you start in math, the initial classes that you take and so forth, there is a concrete answer, and it’s nice to achieve that.

What has been the secret to your success?

When we initially started, we all wanted to keep doing engineering work, and we didn’t want to get out and learn about contracts and learn about these things that are necessary for growth. One of the things that I did was to start reaching out into those areas and start networking with other people and finding ways in which to get the right folks in place to achieve growth. That was something that we hadn’t done in the past. I was willing to get out there and expand and take a little bit of risk to grow the company.

What motivates you about the work at SimTech?

I like the idea that we can make a difference in making sure that a missile system does what it’s supposed to do when the soldier needs it, and that’s very important. We also have had some projects recently where we’ve been able to do some prototypes and do some development that would be products that almost go directly into a soldier’s hands. And it is nice to feel like we’re part of the nation’s defense and being able to do things that would assure the quality that the soldiers need.

What’s next for SimTech?

We’ve gone into a couple of new areas in which we are providing integrated systems, so that’s new for us, but we’re also looking at the next contract cycle. We’ve done some bidding and positioning to try to be able to be prime again on our work that we’ve been doing, and that’s a constant process.

For me personally, because I am not going to be around forever, part of what I’ve been doing for the last five years or so is taking pieces of my work and getting it out to other people. We just appointed a COO. He’s essentially in charge of running the operations, and I’m pulling back and trying to make sure it works smoothly. My part is to make sure that there’s a legacy left that SimTech will continue without me someday.