Fastest Growing Private Companies: Bel Air Internet

As an internet service provider, Bel Air Internet has found profitable niches. BAI Live, the temporary internet division, is the company’s fastest-growing operation, providing online access for events that include the Academy Awards, Grammys and Golden Globes. The company also offers specialized internet access for commercial buildings, multifamily properties, hotels, student housing, movie studios and post-production houses. Bel Air Internet reported revenue of $11.8 million last year. Sherman Oaks Terry Koosed TITLE: Chief Executive # ON FASTEST GROWING LIST: 35 Three-Year Growth Rate: 42% Most Popular Product: BAI Live provides temporary “Pop Up” internet for live events, concerts and conventions. Most venues do not have enough bandwidth to handle the volume of attendees for a large event and their needs (such as sharing photos and videos on social media), as well as the event needs, including live-streaming or powering mobile point-of-sale systems. Many events, such as music festivals, take place in areas without internet at all. By utilizing our privately owned fiber-wireless integrated network, we’re able to bring a high-grade quality internet system to any event. Price: Price is determined by three factors: the amount of bandwidth the event requires, which is driven by the number of attendees and what they are using the Pop Up Internet for; the length of time the customer wants the Internet up for; and how quickly they need it deployed. The price range is generally from $2,000 to $100,000. Main Customers: Post-production facilities, entertainment/media/tech companies, studios, real estate developers, property managers and event planners. Commercial vs. Residential Clients: With flexible office space growing more common, employees and their guests expect to work across laptops and tablets all around the office, increasing the need for a good Wi-Fi plan, which we are able to both design and manage. Residential developers have also become increasingly savvy that a well-planned Wi-Fi blueprint is essential to ensuring that smart-home devices work correctly and that Wi-Fi is evenly distributed among residents. Different from Competitors: Our Pop Up Internet service provides a temporary Internet connection with speeds available up to 1 Gigabit. Our Managed Wi-Fi is how event guests and staff access the Internet through their devices. Utilizing proprietary heat maps, we’re able to design Wi-Fi plans to ensure that it gets distributed evenly. With our streaming services, we have the capability to live-stream your event on any platform of your choosing. Business Model: Our model, which utilizes both fiber and point-to-point wireless, allows us to deliver Internet with extremely low latency of 5 milliseconds or less, compared to 40 milliseconds by our competitors, making our Internet over eight times faster. Our competitors, which are beholden to outdated underground phone and cable lines, cannot offer these services at this time. Also, we offer personalized service to our customers. When you call us, real people answer the phone, without a litany of automated voice mazes first. We offer set install times instead of long appointment “windows.” We also do not outsource at all. Everyone from the customer service reps to our sales team to our technicians are employees of ours (as opposed to sub-contractors) to ensure that our customers get the best service possible. Economic/Social Trends: The need for bandwidth is the largest factor driving our company’s growth. Biggest Challenge: Competitors lying. They will say anything in an ad, like they’re giving consumers a gigabit of internet, which is just not true. They are not upfront about issues like “up to speeds,” the fact that they share internet lines among hundreds of customers or that they’re attempting to sell your information to make more money on the side. Brand awareness is another challenge, as we’re a much smaller company compared to the telecom behemoths. Next Big Opportunity: Streaming live events. The desire for live-stream content has grown exponentially over the last few years, and through BAI Live we are poised to grow with it. Also, one of our largest areas of growth is in commercial internet sales. One feature that really sets us apart is “Broadband on Demand,” which allows businesses to only pay for higher bandwidth during times they really need it. If one of our business customers knows they need extra bandwidth for a few days – such as post-production facility delivering some extra-large files – they can increase their bandwidth with just a single phone call to us. Fun on the Job: I love the fast pace of our business – we are able to see the fruits of our labor quickly. Advice: Learn how to adapt and see change as opportunity. Early on in Bel Air Internet’s history, we had to adapt our model to ensure that we grew with the technology. More recently, as we began to see the need for high-quality broadband at events, we spun an entirely new division.