Interview By Charles Creekmore

Two leading wireless product executives, Martin Bodley ’88, ’91G and JP Carney ’91G, founded Revolabs, Inc., in 2005. Their groundbreaking wireless conferencing systems solve problems plaguing earlier versions of such systems: extraneous ambient noises in the near end, and on the far end, users being tethered to a central device that limits mobility and natural meeting dynamics. They manufacture a wireless product that optimizes voice audio quality for meetings, distance learning, public speaking, and other collaborative applications.

Ready to Fly
Marty: It was the right time for JP and me to start a business in terms of our maturity level. We each have about 15 years of experience, both from a technical and business standpoint. We have lots of connections, lots of networks, lots of resources. Earlier in our careers, I don’t think we could’ve pulled it off. I’ve had these wings hanging on my back for a long time, but now I’m actually able to use them for the first time.

The Big Picture
Marty: When you’re lower down in a large company, you essentially don’t get to see the big picture. You only get dribs and drabs of it. It took JP and me a while to get high enough in our previous organizations to see the whole picture. We had to climb the mountain before we could get an overview.

Taking Out the Trash
JP: When two of you are running a small company, you learn pretty quickly that you’ve got to be able to trust the other guy to do your job when necessary. I push a little more toward the marketing and sales side of things, Marty toward the technical side, the operations, and making sure things are getting done properly and manufactured properly. But there are no set rules. And then there’s always trash collection and fixing copiers when they break down.

Larger Than Life
JP: Currently the company has 14 full-time employees. But we also have reps and distribution partners and contract manufacturers to help us fill out our global footprint. If you include them, then you can bump up our employee list to 20,000 people. So we act a lot bigger than we actually are.

Instant Gratification . . . or Pain
Marty: There’s not a day goes by that we’re not either celebrating something or figuring out—uh oh! —how is this problem not going to kill us. The highs are high and the lows are low. It’s pretty wild, but very rewarding.

JP: Working at other companies, I made a lot of decisions that were very good for the company, but somebody else got credit for it. Here, when you do something, it reflects back on you instantaneously. It’s either instant gratification or instant pain.

A Big Act
Marty: Revolabs hasn’t been the raw breakfast-lunch-and-dinner-at-the-office, weekends-at-the-office, crash-and-burn for 12 months, then die-and-roll-over experience I had imagined for a high-tech startup. It’s been more like an adventure, a fun one, and you just can’t wait to see what the next chapter holds.

Playing Little Ball
JP: We didn’t employ the typical start-up money the way most companies do. In many start-ups, it’s all about spending money as fast as you can, then finding out whether you’ve hit a homerun or struck out and are heading off to the next venture. Either win very big or die. Our start-up money was from a private equity fund, looking for good growth and low downside. They’re happy for us to, y’know, bunt-single, move the runner to second and third, then sac-fly him to home plate. We’re not afraid to play little ball, so long as it gives us the best chance to win. Oh and by the way, homeruns work for us, too!

Giving Back
Marty: The Lazarus Project is a Christian organization for incarcerated kids; we take them out on deep-sea fishing trips for the day. Most of these kids have never seen deep water or a boat for that matter. It’s very rewarding. Certainly there is more to life than the financial rat race of the business world. This allows me to give back to somebody who’s in need.