INTERVIEW: Mel Baiada talks about his new company, his new venture fund and surviving the...

Mel Baiada is one of New Jersey's most successful entrepreneurs.

He started Bluestone, a Mt. Laurel-based software company, in 1989. The company later split into two parts: software and consulting. Bluestone software went public last September. The stock came out at $15 and soon soared to $155 before becoming a victim of the April market meltdown. Its been selling lately for about $18. Last month, Hewlett-Packard. bought Bluestone Software for $467.6 million. Although Baiada, 42, is financially comfortable, he's not stopping to smell the roses. He recently donated $1.5 million to establish the Laurence Baiada Centerfor Entrepreneurship in Technology at Drexel University in Philadelphia in honor of his father Bluestone Consulting is now called Sengen, and Baiada is also launching a venture capital fund, BaseCamp Ventures.

BUSINESS NEWS: You're busy these days.

Baiada: After splitting the company between Bluestone Software and Bluestone Consulting, I had someone run Bluestone Consulting. But in 1999, when I stepped out of the day-to-day operations of Bluestone Software, I focused on growing Bluestone Consulting. There had been a fair amount of turnover, and revenues had declined. So I spent 1999 stabilizing things and getting back on the revenue path. After the secondary offering of Bluestone Software in February, I was able to put some money into marketing, building infrastructure and so on. We also changed the name of the company from Bluestone Consulting to Sengen. Sengen is the Japanese goddess of transformation and eternal youth, so I thought it was perfect for a company that helps companies transform themselves. Innovation is one of our core values. A company is nothing more than an idea factory that is constantly churning out new ideas. Sengen is an e-service firm focused on helping companies build virtual trade communities. We provide everything from strategies and front-end development to technical implementation and hosting of applications. We can help a company with the architecture of its networks and systems.