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Cliff Duffey Named One of The Tech20
The Nashville Business Journal
April 23, 2004 |
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Like Middle Tennessee as a whole, Nashville's technology scene is an entrepreneurial dynamo. It sprouts ideas, attracts capital and creates jobs, in the process becoming an ever-more important piece of the local economic puzzle.
But if there's one recurring theme to conversations about the region's tech sector, it's that there are few people or businesses that stand above the group in a leadership role.
There are few recognizable magnets that draw other people and companies to them to form a strong core that not only grows and creates jobs itself, but also puts a vibrant, recognizable tech face on the region as a whole.
In short, we have no Michael Dell, no Microsoft, no Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. Yet. There is tremendous promise in some of Nashville's tech ventures and boatloads of talent in many of their executive offices.
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 When local officials talk about the need for Nashville tech companies - even ones that eventually fail - the discussions often include Cliff Duffey. As chief technology officer at BlueStar Communications before and for a few months after its sale to Covad, he saw the company rise high and fall far amid the telecom collapse.
But stayed in Nashville and took a stab with Cybera, which has made a strong showing in the growing virtual private network services arena, a relatively new technology that's attractive to businesses with multiple sites. With VPN's companies can be connected securely to a network while providing broadband access to the Internet. For Duffey's team, that's turned into roughly $5 million in annual revenue.
The company has landed contracts to connect the various locations of Mapco Express, Cooker Restaurants and Vein Clinics of America, among others. Mapco is using Cybera's SmartNetwork program to speed up its credit card transactions and improve inventory management and security surveillance.
Duffey also has been active on the fundraising side of his business. Earlier this year, he raised about $2 million in debt financing to complete a data center in Chicago and expand Cybera's operations in the Midwest. That figure included more than $1 million from Commerce Capital, a small business investment company based in Nashville. The remainder came from a round of convertible debt financing.
© 2003 American City Business Journals Inc.
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