adamchavez's posterous

I had the opportunity to sit down with Ryan Caldwell last week. He's the CEO of Entice Labs, a startup based in Provo, UT that is changing the way companies recruit and attract talented people in technology. Using cutting-edge, patent-pending technology, Entice Labs allows employers to reach five times as many job candidates at a fraction of the price. Caldwell, a graduate of an earlier iteration of the Information Systems program at the Marriott School, is no stranger to startups and entrepreneurship. His first company was MadKey, an internet company that specialized in high-speed networks. He discovered an innovative way to get speedy internet to customers for less than what any of his competitors were charging. He described his competitors as being "a little miffed" as they would be out-bid nearly every time they went up against MadKey. Caldwell's team could service an entire apartment complex with high-quality service and only charge a fraction of their competitors’ fees. Needless to say, they had no problem getting new customers. Even more impressive though, was that they managed to maintain a profit margin of 80% even with such low prices.

A few weeks before his graduation from the Marriott School, he sold MadKey for $2.9 million. Not receiving the typical graduation present, he celebrated by doing what everybody who sells their company for a few million dollars before graduation from college does -- he kept working. Caldwell valued his startup experience, but wanted to see the corporate and international side of things.  He worked in the corporate world for about 9 months in San Francisco (my hometown, and one of Caldwell's favorite places), where he traveled as far as London and Singapore for corporations like Microsoft and Visa.  After getting a good feel for the corporate world, he then came back to Utah to help a few friends with their startups. He ended up at Entice Labs after being introduced to the team through colleagues in the area. The company had some big challenges ahead of it when he picked up the reins as CEO, and he and his team have been sprinting and sweating ever since to get the startup to its current level. "It's been one of the hardest things I've done," said Caldwell as we discussed his time at Entice Labs over Pita Pit sandwiches.