Sep. 10th 2010
By Jeff Ostrowski
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Photo: Thomas Cordy/The Palm Beach Post
Posted: 2:23 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 9, 2010
Many entrepreneurs aim to just survive the Great Recession. Not John Duffy.
His mobile marketing firm, Boca Raton-based 3Cinteractive, has found a high-flying niche in an otherwise-moribund economy.
Thanks to the growing importance of text messaging and smartphones, Duffy expects revenue to hit $40 million this year, more than twice last year’s sales. As most companies tighten their budgets, 3Cinteractive is hiring workers and plans to move into larger space in Boca.
In one indication of 3Cinteractive’s explosive expansion, the company ranked 28th on Inc. magazine’s recent Inc. 500 list of the nation’s fastest-growing privately held companies. 3Cinteractive’s sales soared 6,800 percent in the period covered by Inc.’s ranking, from less than $250,000 in 2006 to more than $16 million in 2009.
The five-year-old venture provides a variety of cell phone services to large companies. For example, when Walgreens texts customers to let them know their prescriptions are ready, 3Cinteractive makes the system work.
When staffing firm Interim HealthCare wants to alert workers about job openings, 3Cinteractive technology lets Interim text thousands of workers. And when prisoners make collect calls to their relatives’ cell phones through AT&T’s 1-800-CALL-ATT, it’s a 3Cinteractive innovation that puts the calls through.
Duffy, 44, and partners Mike FitzGibbon and Mark Smith co-founded 3Cinteractive in Delray Beach in 2005. They thought mobile phones were poised for an Internet-style explosion in business activity.
The trio later moved the company to Boca, and their instincts about the future of mobile marketing proved correct. The launch of the iPhone™ and a spate of Android® phones boosted the profile of handheld computers. Lucky for 3Cinteractive, the patchwork of mobile operating systems (including iPhone, Android and BlackBerry®) isn’t easy for companies like Walgreens and Interim HealthCare to navigate.
“If it was easy, everyone would do it,” Duffy said. “What we are good at is integrating complex pieces of technology.”
So far, Duffy said, there’s little competition in the mobile marketing niche, and 3Cinteractive quickly reached profitability. The company’s early backers include Miami Dolphins legend Dan Marino and former Apple Chief Executive John Sculley, who lives in Palm Beach.
While most of its 70 workers are in Boca, 3Cinteractive has an office in Uruguay, along with workers sprinkled throughout the U.S. and Europe. Duffy predicted the company’s staff will triple in the next few years.
Duffy hopes 3Cinteractive’s growth will spur the tech sector in Palm Beach County, although he acknowledges that it’s not the easiest place to run a technology company.
“There’s limitations,” Duffy said. “We don’t have access to some of the personnel we’d like. We struggle to hire database administrators.“
It would be easier to hire in Silicon Valley, Duffy said. Undaunted, he’s trying to incorporate the best of Silicon Valley start-up culture while rejecting the worst. 3Cinteractive’s dress code is strictly casual, and the office’s interior decor looks more like a contemporary art gallery than a typical cubicle farm. There’s a motorcycle in the lobby, a foosball table in the conference room, a collection of guitars in Duffy’s office and cubicles made of shiny metal.
But, Duffy said, he discourages the slavish devotion to work that became synonymous with Silicon Valley during the tech boom.
“We don’t like people working around the clock,” Duffy said.