It was impudent, I know, but I had to ask. "I take it, then, you are a billionaire?" "Well, yeah," came the reply - "let's say I don't have to worry about the price of my next shirt." Normally, neither do I, but that's where our worlds divide.
Rob Ryan, one of America's most successful entrepreneurs, is seriously rich. That doesn't bother him too much. Why would it?
He is a man with a vision. Of third generation Irish extraction, he owns a holiday home at Glengarriff in west Cork, and would like to bring his unusual talents to bear in this State.
University College Cork has established an "entrepreneurship board" - the first university, I understand to do so in the State. The board has come into existence at the prompting of Mr J.J. Kett, director general of the UCC Foundation - UCC's fund-raising arm.
Its membership includes a number of national and international big hitters, and the biggest hitter of them all is Rob Ryan, who is now chairing the board.
Despite the growing number of Irish millionaires, the booming Irish economy has not, so far, been driven by the kind of entrepreneurial spirit that has rocketed Rob Ryan to the top of the pile. He hopes to change all that, to gather around him a business "think tank" and to promote a spirit of ideas and business adventure in young Irish people. And if the ideas are good, he aims to show them where the venture capital can be found, how to make the right kind of presentation to lure the money men on board, and how to negotiate the path that could turn a dream into reality.
Prof Gerry Wrixon, the head of the National Micro-electronics Research Centre; Mr Samir Naji, managing director of Clarity Distribution, Dublin; Mr John McGrane, regional manager for business banking, Ulster Bank Ltd; Mr Denis O'Brien, chairman, Esat Telecom, Dublin; Mr Sean Keohane, president, Banta Global Turnkey Ltd; Dr Tom Cavanagh of Cork, who knows a little about the entrepreneurial spirit; Mr Pat Campbell, chief executive of the Bewley Group; and a number of UCC personnel, in key positions, are part of the initiative.
A mathematics degree and a background in the computer industry, including Silicon Valley in California, were the motivating forces in the Ryan rise to success. And it is some success story.
In 1983 he established a software company and later sold it to the Hayes Corporation. He then established a company called Ascend. Its establishment, Rob Ryan says, led to the "home run". Ascend got into the business of supplying services and expertise to Internet providers around the world. It came to the market place in 1989, just as the communications explosion was bursting forth in the United States. The market was more than receptive. His company came from nothing at the beginning to a turnover this year of $1.6 billion - one of the fastest-growing businesses in American corporate history.
Everyone wants to know how it happened - the business magazines, the talk shows. UCC, too. They all want him to share his business secret and he is willing to do so. That shirt price, which is unlikely to worry him, mirrors the fact that the company he founded, but which he has since left, has 2,000 employees and glowing prospects. When UCC contacted him having learned of his business prowess, he had no hesitation in accepting. He wants to give a spur to new talent on this side of the Atlantic as he has been doing in the United States. His goal is to see that it happens.
"Our board at UCC has been set up to foster Irish entrepreneurs, to create ideas, to make things happen. I believe that it can be achieved," he said. Nowadays, much sought after as a speaker across the United States and in parts further afield, Rob Ryan has been able to fund his own philosophy as few others could do. UCC, he insists, could become the entrepreneurial capital of Ireland.
In America, he has put his ideas to the acid test by purchasing a substantial ranch in Montana where he teaches people the lessons that he has learned.
Through the business community, often by word of mouth, his "Entrepreneur America" programme is bearing fruit.
It works like this.
The chosen ones, those with worthwhile ideas, are brought to the ranch to be put through a fairly rigorous course. They discuss their plans, there is some tough talking - no candy floss approach. This summer, some 50 groups were brought to the Montana ranch. Ryan's pedigree in the American business community is so good that when he puts his name behind a "pupil's" concept, corporate America takes notice.
"My idea at the ranch was to be the incubator - I hope to do the same through my involvement with UCC," he added.
Ryan is a firm believer in the theory that a good business idea needs adequate funding from the start to see it over the initial hurdles, and that the employees of an emerging company should be given part of the action. The public flotation of his company in 1994 was an example. Before that happened, though, he had engineered four different tranches of capital investment, totalling $19 million. And then he went public. That left him with 6.1 per cent of the business, his employees with 18 per cent, and the rest of the stock with the venture capitalists. But 6.1 per cent of a business growing at a phenomenal rate was a good point at which to make an exit. Rob Ryan did it because of a recurring back problem involving serious surgery and because he wished to bring others into the realm of his thinking.
When he pulled out, he left behind a company whose profits continue to go through the roof year after year, in a staggering rags to riches surge. And "yeah", the price of the shirt is still not a problem.