For some executives, migrating from Cell-Loc to RightsMarket may be about as appealing as jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

But John Krpan, the former Cell-Loc executive who assumed the reins at RightsMarket four months ago, shows no visible signs of wear and tear after spending most of the past two years in the front offices of two of the Alberta public companies whose share prices have been hardest hit by the high-tech meltdown.

Larry MacDougal, Business Edge
Former Cell-Loc exec John Krpan is applying his results-oriented style to growing the digital-rights market.

An upbeat and relaxed Krpan seems almost oblivious to a horrendous tech market as he cheerfully pitches RightsMarket Inc., its digital rights management technology and the joy of yachting.

1. Who has had the greatest influence on your life?
“My first inspiration was John F. Kennedy. I heard one of his speeches and it was so compelling. I thought he was just so visionary. He said that we would place a man on the moon and return safely. He said it with such conviction and I thought: ‘That’s real leadership.’ For a youngster like myself to be so compelled by that, I thought that it must be a powerful statement. There have been numerous other people that influenced me – people like Nelson Mandela. Those are the people I’ve taken serious messages from.”

2. What’s the most important lesson the business world has taught you?
“That’s an easy one. Integrity is No. 1. It’s the cleanest way to go. The second thing is to solve business problems. If you’re in the business world and you dance around that, in the end you’re not going to get anywhere. So, I just focus relentlessly on solving business problems. It’s
probably a really rare attribute. A lot of people don’t take that direct route. They either try to create wealth or interest through hype. It’s human nature to take the shortcuts.”

3. What’s your life’s philosophy?
“Just do it. I like the Nike philosophy. If I could’ve invented that one for myself, I would’ve kept it. Whether you’re in the business world or trying to lose weight or quit smoking, there’s no magic answer. Just doing it means solving the problem directly. You have to focus on the job at hand, and over time that’s what is most fulfilling to me.”

4. How do you view the rash of corporate scandals?
“Anyone that is in the business world will look at that and say it diminishes the value of the people who do embrace integrity. It’s unfortunate that all of us are painted with the same brush. To some extent, the positive note is that maybe this will bring more light to the need to operate at a higher level, if you will.”

Larry MacDougal, Business Edge
From the lows of Cell-Loc to the rise of RightsMarket, John Krpan loves a challenge.

5. How did your year in senior management with Cell-Loc, your previous employer, sharpen your business skills?
“It was a very good experience for sharpening business skills. It required you to be able to focus on the real value of what you were providing as opposed to either hype or perception. It really honed your ability to deal with a multitude of issues at once. You had a stock
market that was just going south in an awful hurry, and you had expectations that were very high. (Add) that to a number of challenges, whether it was revenue or managing suppliers or whatever.”

6. When there are so many difficult issues, how do you keep staff morale up in an organization?
“You have to focus on a common vision and goal. That’s what we tried to do (at Cell-Loc). People there believed in what the technology could do and the fact that there was a need for the technology. You have to relentlessly come back to that. You dwell on the whole issue of when the going gets tough, the tough get going. You kind of built on that cliche a lot in a very practical way. That’s what we did.”

7. If somebody had told you about two years ago that
Cell-Loc’s share price would go from $80 (in early 2000) to its current price under $2, what would you have said? (Krpan joined Cell-Loc long after the meltdown began.)
“I actually probably wouldn’t have been surprised. When it went to $80, I don’t know that I would’ve said that’s the true value of the stock. And when it dropped below $2, I would’ve said the same thing. It’s not the true value of the stock. The real value’s in between.”

8. Why did you leave your job as Cell-Loc’s chief operating officer last October?
“Now that I’m here, that’s something I probably shouldn’t answer. It was definitely on positive terms, and I should leave it at that.”

9. Why did you choose to join RightsMarket in April?
“This company came to me and said: ‘We really need to grow revenue.’ They said, ‘We’ve got to get the product out there and commercialize it, and the No. 1 challenge we have is moving from a company that developed a product to one that can fully commercialize it and reap the rewards.’ That’s the sort of thing I like to do – build the market, build revenue and take a company forward that has that vision. It’s definitely a situation that presented a challenge, because it’s still in the tech meltdown phase, but, nonetheless, it had a lot of good attributes – money in the bank, an existing product, existing clients and a desire and capability to move forward.”

10. What was your No. 1 priority from Day 1 with RightsMarket?
“Revenue and commercialization. Of course, one is synonymous with the other.”

11. What’s your strategy for achieving those goals?
“If it was dead easy, of course everyone would invent something and then go commercialize it. But the strategy was to take the existing product (digital-rights management solutions) and sell it to the existing market. As simple as that sounds, most people don’t do that. They either try to get a new product into an emerging market, which is very hard because you’re entering into a very high risk area and there’s no guarantee people will take it and view it the way you do. When I came here, I did a bit of due diligence and there were a lot of people saying: ‘I’ve got this problem protecting (Internet) data, and there’s a gap in terms of what was available.’ When I looked at what RightsMarket has, which is a tool that protects data, it became pretty evident to me that if you matched the two (product and market) up, you’ve got a viable business.”

12. How is the digital rights management (DRM) market
different from other tech markets?
“The challenge is a harvest one for us. Some companies have a challenge in a sense that they don’t have a product or they have the product, but the market’s three years away. Every company has an element of data that they want to protect. Our challenge is one of harvesting the opportunity.”

13. Do you feel you thrive on challenges such as this? “Yeah. But there’s a cutoff between extreme challenges and stupidity, and I’m definitely on the right side of that. It is a challenge, but it’s a manageable one and we’ve got a great team.”

14. How do you go about selling companies on your product? “I try to focus on getting the people to try and identify the data that should never, ever, ever fall into the wrong hands. It might be financial data, patent data, well-site data, health data or legal data. Then you find out what area the people aren’t willing to take a risk in. When you’ve got the answer to that question, you’ve got traction. Then, we can say, that’s where RightsMarket can come in. The greatest potential for our product is in health care and any company with a high intellectual property like chemical companies and pharmaceutical companies. They have a tremendous amount of paranoia around losing trade secrets.” 15. What’s your vision for RightsMarket? “The one we print on the wall is to be recognized as the leader in enabling companies to protect and track their data anytime, anywhere. In the next 18 months, we hope to be a going concern with a fair degree of penetration in some of those markets I’ve talked about. But you get early adopters and late adopters, so it might be years before the late adopters really stand up and say: ‘This is something we need to look at.’ ”

16. Do you see a light at the end of the tech tunnel? “I think the light at the end of the tunnel is that those companies that solve their business problems will prevail and come out of this just fine. For those that continue to seek out the silver bullet, they’ll struggle. I think the appetite for these enormous stock plays, et cetera, has gone away.”

17. What’s your message for RightsMarket shareholders, some of whom have ridden the share price from over $3 to eight cents? “We’ve got a viable product, a viable market, significant working capital, and we will prevail. We’ve got a viable business plan to get us from A to B. We just have to become effective at harvesting the opportunity. Our plan is to be a profitable company by the second quarter of 2003.”

18. Describe your management style?
“I’m results-oriented.”

19. What do you hope to be doing 10 years from now?
(Cracking a broad smile.) “I’m trying to pick which yacht that I’ll be sitting on because RightsMarket shares went through the roof. I’m thinking whether I should be on the one in the Mediterranean or the one in the Gulf Islands.”

20. Are you hoping to spend most of your time on a yacht by then?
“It depends. If it’s still fun, I’ll keep going. Clearly, 10 or 15 years out, it gets harder to know. But I definitely want to be wildly successful here for me, for the shareholders and for the guys I work with every day. If things are still fun in 10 years and there’s another company to build, I’ll do it. If it stops being fun, hopefully I’ll have the rewards to fall back on so I can kick back and enjoy myself.”

IN PROFILE: John Krpan
* Born/raised/age: Edson, AB/Jasper, AB/Kamloops, BC/Victoria/Vancouver; 45.
* Title: Chief executive officer, RightsMarket Inc. Education: University of Victoria, bachelor of science; University of Manitoba, master’s degree.
* Family: Wife Cathy, daughters Chelsea, Brittany, son Tyler.
* Career: Prior to joining RightsMarket in April, Krpan was chief operating officer of Cell-Loc. He also held management positions with Telus, CGI Information Systems and World Bank. He is also a director with Vancouver-based KeyCurve.
* Boyhood dream: To be a forest ranger.
* Hero: John F. Kennedy.
* Passions: Skiing, home renovations.

THE COMPANY: RightsMarket Inc.
* Brass: John Krpan, CEO; Merv Matson, chairman; Rob Solinger, chief financial officer.
* Profile: RightsMarket is a high-tech company specializing in digital rights management (DRM) products and services aimed at protecting digital content on the Internet from piracy and misuse. Its principal product is RightsEnforcer.
* Recent stock price (RTS-TSX Venture): 0.08.
* Website: www.rightsmarket.com
* Address: 500-700 4th Ave. S.W., Calgary, T2P 3J4.
* Phone/Fax: 403-571-1835, 571-1838.