If you work around the Louisville technology startup scene for any length of time, you can’t help but run into Kelby Price.
Through his own tech shop, Price manages the IT systems for Chrysalis Ventures, so he’s embedded in the one of the organizations designed to launch Louisville’s next multimillion-dollar technology initial public offering. But that’s not enough for Price, who spends what seems like every waking moment trying to make Louisville a smarter, happier, richer, and more technologically advanced city.
How does a guy with a background in sociology and social work end up a techie with a startup bent?
It is difficult to look at the development/structure of a community and how it works – sociology – and try to make it better – social work – without studying business. I think we all need to be productive, to contribute, to make a difference in some way. And, for a major portion of our society, business is the path to fulfilling those things.
During summers towards the end of high school and college, I built database applications for my dad’s business, then software for the student government association, and finally started a custom development company with a partner (and my future bride).
It turned out I loved designing, developing, experimenting with, and improving businesses. And technology continued to be a big part of that for me. With software development, I had a great excuse for digging into the details and understanding operations in lots of different businesses.
We have great examples of businesses making good things happen in this community and I want more of those examples. I think this requires steady change in our mature companies, which can be difficult. But startups can shake things up. They’re defined by rapid growth and, when successful, can force change. It’s a beautiful mess.
Apparently I’ve come full circle and am back to looking at the development and structure of our startup community, how it works, and trying to make it better.
What is your take on the Louisville tech and startup scenes?
I’ve really enjoyed working with university co-ops and interns over the last few years. Students and professors can be such an important – maybe the most important – thing a university can provide the startup scene. I’m excited about pushing these opportunities forward.
I do feel like things are moving. The community is continuing to build a stable of regular events to get folks connected. Angel investment is continuing to grow. We have had some good exits over the years, but my sense is we have this tremendous untapped energy and we are still looking for our footing. There is a lot of room to build and do something amazing here and get a really big and visible win.
We’re a little slow on some things…A small example: We are six years late to the startup accelerator game. We could have a bunch of smart people with resources jump on this and spread themselves thin working three or four examples of the same thing. Or, since we’re already late, we could take a breath, reach out and communicate, think long term, and see our way to something game-changing.
Pitch me on your own startup, Gwaled.
Gwaled is Welsh for wallet.
It started as a solution to the “fat wallet” syndrome – too many physical loyalty cards, gifts, and coupons. Our thought, confirmed through customer validation, was that there was a better way – a digital platform to manage your relationships and accompanying things of value with multiple businesses.
As we researched further, we found there have been several of these plays, but nothing as flexible as we were looking for, and certainly nothing built as an open platform that could leverage competing applications. Several had hardware requirements we didn’t think were necessary. Some focused only on a very small part of the customer relationship and/or business market.
Regardless, we realized the real excitement was doing something dead-simple on the front end that would allow more people to leverage big data. This is how we arrived at our platform focus. We started with that vision and have worked backwards.
We’re seeding the system with super simple applications, like Gwaled, that leverage portions of the platform. They can live on in their own right, but really lay the data groundwork. We want to give business the tools to skip right past tracking things like Net Promoter Score and jump right into measuring the quality of networks and referrals based on downstream transaction volume.
We’re moving loyalty beyond a simple “thank you” to actually encouraging new business. Stay tuned.
What is your Edukayshun project?
Right now I’m working with students on a project to provide more direct contact between the board of education and high school students. It is an informal network that can be polled by board members, gives students a voice, and provides a better understanding of the pulse of the system.
The Pulse Project came out of a great experience this past fall where we had students convene over several weeks to develop questions for candidates in the upcoming school board election. Students then presented their questions to a panel a few days before the general election. JCPS had a record number of candidates running, they all showed up, and those I had a chance to speak with afterwards said the forum and the students’ questions were the best they had experienced during their entire campaign.
It was inspiring. And there’s a whole lot more I’d like to tell you about, but, suffice it to say, I think the relationship between the business community and the education system is another huge area of untapped potential. There are a number of people working on those relationships, but they could use a lot more help. I think business has a big role to play here.
If you could pitch Louisville in 10 words or less, what would the pitch be?
I’m torn between keeping the secret that is Louisville and setting it free. How about: “Only come here if you’re going to build something awesome.”
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