OCBJ: Entrepreneurs Pick Up E&Y Awards

June 12, 2008
By Michael Lyster
Orange County Business Journal Staff

Five Orange County medical, technology and other entrepreneurs were honored at a dinner Wednesday night as part of a regional program by accounting firm Ernst & Young.

The local five recipients of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for the Orange County/desert cities region are up for consideration in the firm’s national 2008 entrepreneur awards. The national winners are set to be announced in November.

The local winners:

• Stuart Cumming, chief scientific officer of Aliso Viejo-based Eyeonics Inc., which was acquired by Bausch & Lomb Inc. earlier this year. Cumming and J. Andy Corley cofounded the maker of replacement eye lenses for cataract surgery patients. In 2005, the pair won an Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award from the Business Journal.

• Michael Hajeck, chief executive Aliso Viejo-based SiliconSystems Inc., a maker of computer drives that use flash memory instead of spinning disks. Hajeck started the company in 2003 and has raised venture funding.

• Tracy Price, chief executive of Irvine’s Linc Group LLC, a provider of building maintenance services. Price started Linc’s predecessor company and sold it to Enron Corp. in 2001. He spent years extracting the business from the Enron wreckage and now counts yearly sales of $500 million.

• William Wang, chief executive of Vizio Inc. of Irvine. The seller of flat TVs had about $2 billion in sales last year. Wang started the business by tapping Asian suppliers and marketing the low-cost sets to big retailers. Wang won an Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award from the Business Journal earlier this year.

• Lawrence Armstrong, chief executive of architecture firm Ware Malcomb in Irvine.