When he's convinced he's onto a good idea, Warren Roy is the kind of guy who loves to take a risk on it. Even if everyone else tells him he's crazy. When he was faced with the choice to put a down payment on a house or invest it all in his own business, he didn't hesitate. "I bet it on the business," he said.
In 1990, before he had his good idea, he moved to B.C. to design and build homes. The Internet and the use of email had begun to proliferate, but the many dot-com companies surfing those first e-waves "just didn't feel real" to him, he said, and he wondered what he was missing.
"I guess I would describe myself as a guy who wants to know how things work." So he got his hands on a techy, 600-page tome entitled Using TCP/IP by John Ray, read it three times and learned how to network systems using the same standard cross- platform system that undergirds the Internet.
He and a friend then built a software system for archiving data based on the principles outlined in the book and started a small computer-aided design (CAD) business for the architecture and engineering industry. They named it Global Relay.
"Initially, the vision of Global relay was to capture communications between industry consultants – the architects [and] the engineers – and to preserve it in an archive," said Roy.
The startup was rough. For years he didn't take a salary. "We had an extremely hard four or five years. Then the securities and exchange commission in the United States came down with rules that required the financial industry to archive their data."
He calls it a green field moment. "We recognized that we had the perfect technology for the wrong industry." He decided he needed to make the shift over to finance. But his system was built using UNIX, and the world was chasing Microsoft in the overwhelming belief that UNIX was obsolete.
"[We went] in the opposite direction, which in hindsight was the smartest thing we ever did."
While people rolled their eyes at him, he pushed on, trying to find investors.
"We spoke to every single venture capitalist, literally, in the country. Not a single one would give us the time of day."
Roy was undaunted. He worked to build relationships with securities dealers in the U.S., letting them know he possessed the technology to meet their archiving needs.
He sought input from them on how to configure the system for the financial industry, made the adjustments, and little by little, built up a customer base that started with broker dealers and then expanded to investment advisers, hedge funds, private-equity investors and banking.
Global Relay now archives data for 22 of the world's 25 largest banks and for 60% of the world's registered hedge funds, among other notable portions of the global finance sector, in over 90 countries. Today, copies of the book that started it all are available on Amazon for a penny.
"That's the thing with business; people always think there's a formula to it, that if you get a couple of guys with an MBA and a few technologists, you can work through a plan on an Excel spreadsheet." How a business evolves is virtually impossible to predict, he said, and success requires flexibility.
It also needs enthusiasm.
"People buy passion," he said. "You have to be able to execute on whatever it is you're designing and building. But unless you have a huge amount of passion surrounding that, people just won't give it a 100%."
The journey hasn't been trouble free, but he had supporters who made a difference. One of those supporters, president and general counsel Shannon Rogers, has worked with Roy since Global Relay was in its infancy. She came into the company after working in corporate law in Toronto.
She never imagined she'd work in the tech industry, but "you can't help getting pulled in to follow him," she said. "He's a visionary, a big thinker." She also sees him as a born leader who runs the business with integrity and candour.
"When you tie that in with the passion and a huge vision, the team naturally follows. He makes me able to go into those high-level meetings and make the pitch. He gives me confidence." •
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