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.
Caldwell likes to communicate with analogies, and used many of them to describe the ideas we discussed. He called MadKey the “JetBlue of High-Speed Internet,” as it didn’t try to get all the routes, just the ones it could be the best in.
Caldwell also reminisced about his time at BYU. He and I are both Information Systems majors, so he asked me about some of the professors, “Lindstrom, is he still there?,” he asked. “What about Hansen?” We both laughed as we swapped experiences about the classes we had taken from them.
Before we wrapped up, I asked Caldwell about his motivation for building companies — mostly out of curiosity as Paul Ahlstrom of vSpring recently asked Derek Pando and I about the motives that attracted us to entrepreneurship.
His answer surprised me, but the things he said I could relate to. He started, “I have a strong belief in duty. When I see some of the problems that our country faces I think that most, if not all, of the problems we have could be solved if more Americans took seriously their responsibility to produce and build and serve. Unfortunately, there are many people, even in Utah, that expect a handout. It is such a blessing to be here in this country and if we don’t take our lives and make something of value for others we don’t live up to what it means to be an American.”
His answer reminded me of my own beliefs, and my own love for our country. Caldwell’s point, as far as I understood it, is that “when much is given, much is required.”
If you’d like to find out more about Entice Labs, Ryan Caldwell, or the rest of the team (which, by the way, includes current Marriott School Information Systems professor, Stephen Liddle), visit their website at http://enticelabs.com
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