DES MOINES - As a venture capitalist, John Pappajohn has risked hundreds of millions of dollars on new, untested businesses that have gone on to great success. It made him a rich man.

Now, he's betting on Iowa.

In recent years, Pappajohn has sunk millions of dollars into educational ventures around the state: The Iowa State University Pappajohn Center for Entrepreneurship; The John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Centers at the University of Iowa, University of Northern Iowa and Drake University; The Pappajohn Entrepre-neurial Center at North Iowa Community College; and the list goes on.

In addition to startup money, Pappajohn gives his centers $1 million a year for continuing operations. As he does in venture capitalism, Pappajohn is investing in ideas.

But the only return that Pappajohn expects on this investment is that it will help to foster a new generation of young entrepreneurs who can keep Iowa's economy humming into the future.

"It's a passion for me," Pappajohn said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. "This is exactly what the doctor ordered for the state of Iowa. I don't know any other state that's doing this, and it's working."

Pappajohn, 76, hasn't abandoned the venture capital firm that's made him a multimillionaire. When he's in Iowa, he's in his 21st-floor office in downtown Des Moines by 6:30 a.m. every morning.

His office suite is a small testament to the interests and passions that drive this son of Greek immigrants. The walls are hung with dozens of pieces of modern art. The conference room, with a sweeping view to the west, has shelves full of financial abstracts, but also books on art and theology, and novels by the likes of Philip Roth.

Pappajohn often speaks in a gravelly near-whisper, but it only makes him sound more engaged in the topic at hand. While he will talk about the business ventures that led Forbes magazine to estimate his wealth at $200 million - a figure he said is close - his voice drops to its softest when he talks about his efforts to help young Iowans become entrepreneurs.

"I like business, and I make money," Pappajohn said. "I like to make money, and anybody can make money."

It's that notion - anybody can make money - that seems to drive Pappajohn more than anything else. His own background is testament.

His father, George Pappajohn, came to America, speaking no English and with a surname handed to him at Ellis Island, and settled in Mason City where he started a corner grocery store. He returned to Greece to marry, but soon returned with his wife, Maria, and newborn son, John. The couple would have two more sons, Aristotle and Socrates.

"I always, as a kid, did everything to make a living," John Pappajohn said. "I did things you wouldn't believe if I told you. My dad had the little grocery store, and my brothers and I plucked 50,000 chickens by hand."

Pappajohn's father died when his son was 16, leaving the young man to run the store. He and his brothers managed to get college educations only by alternating years that they attended school. Pappajohn attended North Iowa Area Community College and later the University of Iowa, now two of the biggest recipients of his philanthropy.

After college, Pappajohn got into the insurance business in Mason City. By the late '60s he had built up a nest egg of about $100,000, which he plowed into his fledgling venture capital firm. Within a few years he was pulling down millions of dollars, mostly by investing in startup health care ventures.

Using only his own money for investments, Pappajohn has since helped found dozens of public companies. Wall Street analysts have often credited Pappajohn for having a golden touch when it comes to anticipating breakthroughs and trends in medical research and rewarding them with his investments.

"You gotta have the gut feeling," Pappajohn said.

Since its inception in 1974, Pappajohn Capital Resources has racked up a 67.6 percent internal rate of return for its investors, according to figures released by the company.

"I've made hundreds of millionaires," Pappajohn said. "But the great thing about what I do is making a deal work."

Pappajohn constantly has dozens of prospects in the pipeline. He travels between Des Moines and New York City numerous times a month, and can rattle off the rates of return he expects for the different deals he's juggling. At present he has four companies going public.

While Pappajohn works in a realm of business that is highly competitive and can be cutthroat, he isn't too troubled by recent Wall Street scandals. "Bad guys just tend to be bad guys," he said.

Pappajohn is not a fan of government regulation and, on another hot topic in the business world, he said he's sympathetic to workers whose jobs have been outsourced overseas - but said it's often a necessary evil.

"I think a couple of my companies have done some work in India," he said. "Not very much. But you know ... if you can hire a Ph.D. in India for three dollars an hour and make him crank out the work for you, there's a responsibility there to make money."

Even as he travels the world of high finance, Pappajohn's passion lies in the small businesses dotting Iowa's landscape. He notes with particular pride that several of his recent investments were in businesses incubated at Iowa State University's entrepreneurial center.

A goal for Pappajohn is spreading word of Iowa's opportunities to other venture capitalists and investors. While some might view Iowa as quaint or out of the way, he said there are opportunities for the state to capitalize on its reputation for a strong work ethic and highly educated population.

"Iowa's kind of a special place," Pappajohn said. "If you haven't grown up here, if you like the big city, it isn't a place you might normally migrate to. And so when people start here that are from here, there's a higher probability of staying here and succeeding."

Pappajohn hopes that the entrepreneurs and businesses being minted at his centers will form a new economic engine for Iowa. While he supports big-dollar efforts like the $503 million Iowa Values Fund, he believes the heart and soul of the state's economy lies in small businesses.

"Everybody talks about these million dollar companies and they're going to start with 20,000 jobs," Pappajohn said. "But we have these little businesses and that's where it all starts."

To that end, he nearly jumps in his chair as he talks about the work of the entrepreneurial centers. The John and Mary Pappajohn Educational Center is under construction in Des Moines, named for Pappajohn and his wife. "I'm already planning the addition," he joked.

He also talks excitedly of the special housing that's being built at Iowa State specifically for entrepreneurial students. He hopes close proximity will ignite constant, furious brainstorming among the budding businesspeople.

"I call it smelling armpits," said Pappajohn, who also rewards many individual students with scholarships that are especially aimed at individuals who are ethnic minorities or disadvantaged in some way.

"Money, to me, is just a means to be able to give it away in scholarships and buildings and this and that," Pappajohn said. "Everybody wants to get rich, and everybody wants to go to heaven."