Red Ventures Profiles
Ric Elias is the CEO and co-founder of Red Ventures. Since founding the company in 2000, he has worked to establish Red Ventures as a leader in high-tech, online customer acquisition for some of the world’s most respected services companies, including DIRECTV, ADT Security Services and SIRIUS Satellite Radio. Ric began his career in General Electric Co.'s Aerospace Division and is a graduate of GE's Financial Management program. In 1994, he joined the marketing services company CUC International (later known as Cendant). Prior to founding Red Ventures, Ric served as president of Spark Network Services, a promotion and data company held by Cendant. Ric received his undergraduate degree from Boston College and his MBA from the Harvard Business School.
An Interview with Ric
"I'm a frustrated athlete," says Ricardo "Ric" Elias when asked about the secret to his success. "To me, business is the Olympics for non-athletes. It comes down to loving competition; figuring out whom we should compete against and how to beat them," says the gregarious CEO of Red Ventures.
Ric was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico and came to the U.S. in the mid 1980s to attend Boston College on a partial academic scholarship. He knew very little English when he arrived on campus, and was alarmed to find that he could barely understand what his professors were saying. "I adjusted my schedule and took only classes that dealt with numbers my entire first year," he says. "I'd always been decent at math, and things like calculus and accounting were non-lingual. I was able to buy some time to improve my English skills. I look back and think, 'Had I known what I didn't know. '" He laughs and shakes his head. "Ignorance is indeed bliss!"
After his years at Boston College, Ric applied for the prestigious GE financial management program for recent college graduates. He made the cut and began the two year program working in both Philadelphia and Japan. With GE, he traveled the world - Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Korea, Australia, and many other countries. "I had a real thirst for adventure and for learning about other cultures. Being immersed in different cultures for short periods of time helped me develop deep intuitive skills. I love talking to people, learning about them by asking lots of questions, and figuring out what makes them tick," he says.
From GE, Ric went on to Harvard for his MBA. "It's a good thing for me they needed a few minorities at Harvard," he jokes. Upon graduating from Harvard, Elias took a job with CUC (later Cendant), a holding company for marketing businesses. "It was a fertile learning place," he says. "Cendant would buy companies, then come back to headquarters and look at the available players and say, 'You, go run this company.' I had the opportunity to do six different jobs in six years."
In September 1999, Ric moved to Charlotte to start RedF.com, an online discount and loyalty program, with his friend and Cendant colleague Dan Feldstein. A few months later, the dot-com bubble burst, and RedF.com nearly crumbled. They quickly adjusted the business model, and RedF evolved into a successful direct marketing agency.
During RedF’s ascent, Ric and Dan launched another business, Red Ventures. The idea was to help leading brands in service-related verticals acquire new customers using an innovative marketing and sales platform. Business took off, and in 2005, they sold RedF to its management team and focused their energies fully on Red Ventures.
So what's next for Ric, early retirement to some exotic locale? "No way," he says. "I am having too much fun. At Red Ventures, we have built a world class customer acquisition platform and are expanding into many new verticals. We recruit top talent to build great businesses. We have very solid relationships with our brand partners. The future is extremely bright here." No matter how much growth Red Ventures experiences, Ric is not content with reflecting on past successes. There's always new opportunity in the pipeline for the team at Red Ventures.
Ric lives with his wife Brenda and their two children in Charlotte, N.C.