QuikCat Company Profile
by Julie Henry

Do you ever get impatient waiting for internet files to download to your computer? The founder of a local business called QuikCat Technologies is betting that people like you are going to demand faster data delivery from their internet providers. And that "need for speed" may help him grow his mayfield village company into a multinational corporation.

The "cat" in QuikCat stands for Cellular Automata Transforms. It's a process that takes data, reduces its size, and sends it quickly across networks. This patented technology was developed by former college professor and researcher Olu Lafe.

Lafe is a native of Nigeria who earned a Ph.D. in computer hydralics from Cornell University. He taught at colleges in Africa and the United States before coming to Cleveland in 1988 to join a research team at Case Western Reserve University. The team was working on the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative - more commonly known as the "Star Wars" project.

Olu Lafe: I started looking at different ways of solving the same problems. I could not get enough interest in academia for people to embrace it. So I figured out that the best way forward is to create a company and try to do it on my own.

The challenge was finding the cash to launch the venture. As an academic, Lafe was familiar with applying for research money. And he received two federal grants that kept the company afloat for its first couple of years. Later, Lafe sought out angel investors for his business.

Olu Lafe: Well an angel investor is somebody who believes in you as an entrepreneur and is willing to risk their money. We call them angels because they don't put too many demands on you like a conventional investor, like a venture capitalist will demand a lot of things from you.

One of my first investors is a friend of mine who is a medical doctor in this community. He was the first person to commit a large sum of money to us, which at that time looked very big. So the first $100,000 investment came from him.

Friends and family believed in the Lafe's vision for the future. But Lafe says it was a hard sell getting local investors to buy into information technology.

Olu Lafe: About five years ago, I gave a number of lectures in this region talking about how the download over music over the internet was going to be big. I was looking for money. And people thought I was crazy. They said why would people want to download music over the internet. And I told them I was looking for two million dollars to use our technology to be an enabling technology to download music over the internet. I gave a number of presentations, I talked to venture companies around the area, I talked to agencies that get their funding from the government to help startup companies here. People did not see, they could not see it. They thought if it was a great idea, somebody elsewhere would have done it.

We could not raise a penny on this. A year later, Mp3 came out to the market and exploded in the marketplace. After we were able to create products from the technology and we got our first patent, so it was in 1997, I think it became a little bit easier for people. And also towards the late 1990s, we had the boom in the technology sector, so there was more money avail now for investment. So I think people within the region, they were more willing to invest.

It was very frustrating initially. People always wanted you to show them, demonstrate the next thing.

Despite the conservative investment climate, Lafe decided northeastern Ohio was still the best place for him to locate his business.

Olu Lafe: First of all, we like the quality of life here. That when you bring employees here, their kids can go to very good schools. The cost of living is very, very competitive, I mean it's much better than either of the coasts. And you tend to retain your workers. It's a great environment, so when you employ people here, they stay with you. On either of the coasts, it's very difficult to hold onto workers.

With a solid base established in the United States, including a $15 million investment from Nortel Networks in 2000, QuikCat is setting its sites on Europe and Asia.

In addition to the 15 employees at its Mayfield Village headquarters, QuikCat has hired about 25 workers in Thailand and Japan to market its products. And in late summer, Japanese consumers will get their first chance to use QuikCat technology on their cell phones and Palm Pilots.

In spite of a global vision for the company, Lafe says he's committed to keeping its headquarters here in northeastern Ohio. But he says that if the region is truly going to reinvent its economy, local investors need to learn to accept failure as well as success.

Olu Lafe: I think leaders here, business leaders, venture companies, they have to be willing to take a risk. If you don't take a risk, you can't win. And I think this is what has differentiated the Silicon Valley area. People will take risks. Will there be failures, yes, there will be failures. But if you can have 10% success, that will transform this region.

That first $100,000 changed us in this company. And there was a time when we were tempted to move, because people in Silicon Valley said if you want get money from us, you have to move your company from Ohio. But because we believed in this area, we've stayed in the area. We believe we can succeed here. But the people who have the money, the financial institutions, the government, they have to create an environment here where entrepreneurs would love to stay here.