William R. Davis

The creator of the ICBM methodology and SPREADSHEET and author of the book,
Winning the Litigation Money War, is William R. Davis. Mr. Davis was co-owner and president of a highly successful manufacturing company that was a litigant in consecutive, sometimes overlapping, civil actions that spanned fifteen years. As both a defendant and plaintiff over that period, he worked closely with attorneys from no less than eight different law firms. While very successful in the litigation, which comprised a wide variety of cases, Mr. Davis recognized the compelling need for a much improved methodology for evaluating settlement offers. That recognition as a seasoned client, along with his graduate degrees in mathematics and business administration, led him to develop the methodology and write the book.

William R. Davis was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received a B.S. degree in Mathematics from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. After graduating from the Academy with honors in 1968, he attended the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, where he received an M.S. in Mathematics. Bill then spent the next six years as a nuclear submarine Officer, serving aboard both ballistic missile and fast attack submarines.

When his obligation was completed, Bill left the Navy and attended Stanford Business School where he received an M.B.A. in 1977. Bill then went to work for McKinsey & Company, the large management consulting firm, where he consulted for Fortune 500 companies, primarily in the areas of strategy and organization.

After five years at McKinsey, Bill started his company, Sentex Systems, lnc., with his partner, Rick Greenthal, whom he met at McKinsey. Sentex eventually developed into a fully vertically integrated manufacturer of access control equipment and became a market leader in the industry. Sentex was awarded several patents for its revolutionary advances in telephone entry systems, a segment it dominated. Without any outside financing at any point in its history, not even a working capital loan, Sentex had fifteen years of continuous profitable growth when Bill and Rick sold Sentex to the Chamberlain Group in 1997. Started from scratch in 1983 with just an idea and Bill and Rick’s personal savings, Sentex had 120 employees when it was sold.

Bill has been living in Los Angeles since 1977. He is on the Board of Directors for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles. In his free time he enjoys a variety of athletic activities, including baseball, tennis, scuba diving, skiing and snowboarding. He has been heli-skiing in Canada every year for the last twenty-two years. Remarkably, his knees are still in good shape.