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Ben King's heart has long been tied to the build phase of a company.
“I like to consider myself a startup guy,” says King, a Business Observer 40 under 40 winner in 2013. “I get tired of doing a lot of the same things over and over” at an established company.
That's one reason King left Voalte, a mobile health company he helped launch in 2008. The Sarasota-based company, which improves the way hospital employees communicate with each other, over smartphones, was well past 100 employees and had more than $35 million in venture capital funding when King left. That was a little too big for King, and last year, when his wife was accepted into a graduate program at the University of Florida, the couple moved to Gainesville.
In his post-Voalte life, King went back to a startup. He and his brother, Anthony King, launched Keep it Simple Technologies, which develops software apps and works on a contract basis to create apps for other business. “I was looking for another opportunity, and I didn't want to work for someone else,” says King, a Toronto native. “I wanted to do my own thing.”
The first product the company developed is a customer relationship management software app called Always Be in Contact. The idea for the app came from Anthony King, when he was a salesman for an Orlando Ferrari dealership and had trouble keeping up with sales leads.
The app, from an iPhone or an Apple Watch, can generate automatic, customizable reminders for sales follow-ups. Other features include: three-day alerts to contact leads and three-month alerts for prospects; the ability to import current iPhone contacts into a category; and contacting clients directly from the app via phone, e-mail or text.
The business model, says Ben King, is to sell the app, with a monthly user fee, as a customer relationship management tool for large-scale businesses. Targeted clients include car dealerships and real estate brokerages — entities with high volume sales leads. The app is free for individual users.
Keep it Simple, with four employees, including the King brothers, has a few other projects. The list includes a mobile health app Ben King says will help people comply with medication needs after a doctor's appointment.
Whatever the next big thing is for King, he says a lesson he learned from Voalte is the best product will get little traction without a good team. “It's really not about the technology,” says King. “It's about the team and the people. We are slowly building up a company here.”
Blast from the Past
Here are some answers from Ben King's questionnaire when he was 40 under 40 winner in 2013:
Best place to network: Bars. The idea of Voalte started in a bar.
The most important business lesson I've learned: Everything is always harder and takes longer than you think.
Favorite off-hours activity: Anything athletic and being outside like running, playing tennis and kayaking.
Two people, dead or alive, you'd like to have dinner with: Steve Jobs and Isaac Newton.
Who would play you in a movie about your life: Maybe Matt Damon, but that's up for discussion.
If I had a magic wand I'd: Cure cancer.
— Mark Gordon
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