Keith LeClaire

After completing his MBA, Keith joined Oracle in 1989 and worked as an AE in their direct marketing division, run by Marc Benioff. Keith always exceeded quota and received commensurate awards. In January 1992, Keith acquired a small equipment brokerage in the semiconductor industry that produced a quarterly printed publication; Keith built new trading systems from the ground up and grew the company.

In 1996, the company refocused its printed catalog to an online presence and rebranded to CAE Online. Revenues and profits quadrupled, and as the model morphed away from a brokerage to that of arbitrage, profits went from an average of 7 percent per transaction to over 20 percent. At the heart of the trading systems created by Keith were data and contact management systems that gave CAE the reputation of having the most accurate contact information in the industry, which was critical to enabling the arbitrage model. Arbitrage and the underlying systems and methodologies became CAE’s key advantage in the space. The company grew to approximately 40 employees and over $100 million in gross merchandise sales. Keith recruited a new CEO in 2008 and eventually sold CAE to the management team in January 2014.

Since that time, Keith has co-founded a boutique integration and distribution company in the data storage space. While operating that company with his partner, Ken Hoppe, he returned to focus on contact management and technology to facilitate communication with prospective clients. This became the genesis for Modigie.