Founding a company with no capital and recording millions in sales within seven years is impressive. Doing it twice? Well, that’s remarkable. It’s a feat accomplished by entrepreneur Samuel Keller, who’s landed two startups on the Weatherhead 100 list in just under a decade. A native of Bath with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Akron, Keller has entrepreneurship in his blood. “My father is from the Jewish ghettos of Pittsburgh and is a self-made millionaire — as is his whole family,” he says.
In 1992, Keller launched his first business, Kelltech, a buyer and seller of mainframe equipment. “The first year, it was just me in my home office, and I managed to do $292,000 in sales,” he recalls. “I was quite proud of myself.” Kelltech was sold for over $10 million dollars in 1999 to GTCR, a private equity group from Chicago. "After selling my first business, I realized that the delivery model was wrong...the demand was still there, but the delivery model needed to be changed." So many technology firms failed, because they didnt realize it was the developers and programmers which were reinventing the wheel, over and over again. I founded Oxcyon, in 2000, learning from past business models (like automotive) and set out to automate the development process. The rest is history, and today, we are able to 'manufacture' in minutes, what used to be customized over 6 months. This is no different than the reliability and affordability offered by Henry Ford's Model T, vs the more expensive, difficult to maintain Bugatti...which went out of business."