Steve Rice, founder and CEO of Built2Buy, describes his career as the story of a 25-year-old startup.
Rice, an art major, said he discovered an interest in technology in 1999 while working at Ashland Outdoor Store. He built a custom content management system that eventually led to the spinoff of Dotcomjungle in 2003.
Starting in 1999 as an art major who discovered a knack for technology while working at the Ashland Outdoor Store, Rice built a custom content management system that eventually led to the spinoff of "dotcomjungle" in 2003.
Over the years, Rice said he developed his own philosophy about building systems.
"Bad systems make everybody look bad," he said. "Good systems make the good people look good and give you an opportunity to identify the people who could level up if you trained them."
That thinking led to a major shift in 2010. Rice moved from managing hundreds of client relationships to focusing on a smaller number of long-term partnerships. He said the company now has an average client retention rate of 14 years.
Today, his latest venture, Built2Buy, focuses on simplifying wholesale ordering for small manufacturers and distributors.
"We are the only truly stakeholder-based wholesale ordering platform in existence," Rice said.
Rice said the company designed the platform around the needs of sales representatives and dealers. He said it operates 75% faster than traditional enterprise resource planning, or ERP, systems.
Rice said advances in artificial intelligence have accelerated development, reducing the time needed to build new features from six months to between seven and 10 days.
While some worry AI could replace jobs, Rice sees it as a tool that can support smaller teams.
"The promise of AI is that we can remove the drudgery, so that we're giving people better tools that allow them to be better and work better and feel better about themselves," Rice said.
Rice said maintaining a "human in the loop" remains important to ensuring workplaces remain places people want to work and customers want to support.
Based in Southern Oregon's Rogue Valley, Rice said he plans to grow Built2Buy to 50 customers within the next 18 months.
Guest
- Steve Rice, founder and CEO, Built2buy
