40 years of DAI

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Research Triangle Institute and university-based
teams, to provide organizational expertise,
revitalize civil service infrastructure, and teach
financial management and budgeting.
Like microenterprise and banking, public sector
management emerged as a market opportunity
within DAI’s reach. In contrast, the company’s
commercial sector initiatives of the 1990s were
less spontaneous and far less successful.
The asset purchase from Experience Inc. (EI)
proved useful in building credentials for USAID
proposals in the agribusiness arena, but EI’s
commercial sector consulting practice was in
decline, and DAI discontinued it soon after the
transaction, closing EI’s Minneapolis office and
reassigning its remaining employees to DAI’s
mainstream project portfolio.
Mickelwait then launched another initiative, DAI
Commercial Services Inc. (CSI). Intended to be
an investment and trading arm for the company,
CSI embarked on several agriculture-related
investments, taking minority stakes in a Thai fish
farm and an organic herb production company
in Florida that had been started by two former
DAI employees. Its biggest commitment was a
joint venture with Potex, a U.K.-based genetic
engineering start-up that had identified a
means of speeding up the germination of seed
potatoes. The DAI Board readily approved the
$75,000 investment, but as a business partner,
Potex proved to be short on cash and difficult
to work with, and large amounts of staff
time, including Mickelwait’s, were consumed in
unsuccessful efforts to make the joint venture
work. CSI went through two different executives
in less than two years, neither of whom could
solve the operational problems in its investment
portfolio. At the end of 1998, with commercial
ventures accounting for only 1.6 percent of
revenues, and none showing a profit, DAI mothballed
the venture and eventually closed it down
altogether.