Many people - business rivals and government types included - want to know how he will fulfil his quest to turn his company, Toronto-based Globalive Communications Corp., into Canada's fourth- largest wireless carrier.

The self-described new kid on the block must also show how his plan will meet Canada's foreign-ownership limits (because his private company has heavy backing from Egyptian telecom giant Orascom Telecom Holding and its majority owner Weather Investments), and convince a Quebec partner to let him piggyback onto a network in La Belle Province.

A gregarious sort, Lacavera has transformed Globalive from an idea into an internationally linked firm that produced $125 million in revenues last year. The firm provides standard phone and internet services to 30 countries.

Globalive's successful $442-million bid to provide cellphone services across the country, except in Quebec, helped the federal government's wireless spectrum auction produce $4.2 billion worth of new investment.

Larry MacDougal, Business Edge
Globalive Communications chairman and CEO Anthony Lacavera knew early in life that he wanted to be an entrepreneur.

It might not be wise to bet against him.

1. What are your parents' backgrounds?

"My dad and my mom are both Italian-Canadians. My dad was a lawyer. He's now a judge in Ontario and my mom was a high-school teacher. She became a consultant to the Catholic teachers' union. She ended up developing English education in Ontario predominantly. She retired a few years ago. I have one sister, Catherine, who lives in California. She spent time in New York. She is an attorney with an MBA and also an engineer. She's definitely the smart one in the family. She worked for a big law firm in New York and then she moved to California and started working for Google several years ago as their senior litigation counsel. My girlfriend, Amanda Alvaro, a very dear friend whom I love very much, is currently advising the Liberal Party in their campaign. She's a spokesperson and pundit for political campaigns and runs a division of an advertising agency in Toronto."

2. What was your boyhood dream?

"I started out loving hockey. When I was a kid playing hockey, the Oilers were awesome. So I grew up watching Wayne Gretzky and the whole list - Paul Coffey, Jari Kurri, Grant Fuhr and that whole amazing team. For a while, I dreamed of being a hockey player, but didn't have the physical ability. But very early on in my life, I decided I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to work for myself, build a business for myself and get out there and make a name for myself. Just do my own thing. I started really thinking about business really when I was getting into college at the University of Toronto and started thinking about this business when I was just 22."

3. How did you get into engineering?

"I was good at math when I was a kid. I was always into building stuff. I should have taken up civil engineering. I would have been really good at it. I would have enjoyed it more. But I really thought computers were awesome, too. I always played with computers when I was a kid. As I was growing up, computers were growing up. Twenty years ago, if you go back to 1988, (interest in computers) really started gaining momentum ... I thought an engineer was a good place to go out and get a job, even though I knew in my heart I could never go out and work for a company and actually do engineering. I wouldn't have been happy."

4. Did you start developing Globalive while still in university?

"I was involved with an internet-based startup. I was the fourth or fifth employee. I had a great potential opportunity to stay there, but it was really never my thing that I started. That didn't last long - and I knew it wasn't going to last very long - so I started this business pretty much as a graduate and threw myself at it full-time."

5. What became of the web startup company?

Anthony Lacavera

"It was called Caught in the Web. It was sold shortly after I left. It wasn't going to survive after the web became popular. It didn't have the management team to go the distance. The whole market was changing."

6. What gave you the idea for Globalive?

"Actually, someone who worked at Bell told my dad, who then told me, that there was going to be deregulation of telecom in Canada. Back in January of 1998, the local market was deregulated. You may remember, going back that far, that there was a whole emergence of competitive phone companies - none of which, really, were successful. It was the whole ... boom and then bust of the telecom competition. The major incumbent telephone companies were not materially affected at all by the supposed substantial weight of competition. That's when I had the original idea."

7. How did you raise money?

"I raised a very small amount of external financing ($200,000 through the Royal Bank's small-business loan program) and did a very small subsequent equity financing (of $4 million) with angel investors. All of those investors were then bought out between 2002-2004. They made a very good return. I then reorganized the company to have partners in the business that were also customers, which created a very strong growth platform for Globalive."

8. How did that work?

"It was a really unique structure for a private company, because our customers were incented to grow the business. They all became shareholders. Now, I've reorganized the company to get into wireless and those customers that were shareholders have also made a big return (after being bought out)."

9. Who was your first customer?

"Our first customer was Canadian Pacific Hotels. It's now called Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, or CP Legacy. That's all the big, grand hotels. The Chateau Laurier (in Ottawa), the Banff Springs Hotel. The Chateau Lake Louise. The Hotel Vancouver. The Royal York (in Toronto). The Palliser (in Calgary). We were very fortunate to land a customer like that. They're still our customers today, I'm proud to say. They've been a customer for 10 years now. It's amazing."

10. How did you begin to grow?

"Initially, we were selling services to hotels. We started to sell to as many hotels as possible. We signed up Delta Hotels, which was a part of the CP group at the time. They were a separate brand, obviously. We signed up Marriott Hotels. We signed up Starwood, ultimately. A lot of it was one hotel at a time, because we were a totally unknown company. Even though we were able to secure the parent company, at each hotel, we still had to talk to the general manager, and a lot of these hotels were independently owned, even though they fly a Delta flag or whatever it might be. There's still a property owner there who wants to know who the service providers are. I can remember travelling across the country on a really tight budget to go hotel by hotel. I guess it's never left me today."

11. What was the turning point for the company, where you really took off?

"There were a couple of big events in our company's history. First, we almost died. When the telecom market imploded in 2000, the Nasdaq collapsed. There was the whole bust and boom market.

Obviously, we were not able to get anymore funding. Gone. We had channels, so we would sell to a newly emerging phone company and they would sell to the hotel. Our channels went bankrupt. When they went down, that really hurt us badly ... That's when I started going across the country and started getting the customer myself. Then there was another big event in the company's history. We said: 'You know what? We have got a lot of software development expertise. We can really diversify this company because we know a little bit about software development and now we know a little bit about telecom.' I knew nothing about either. I got into it right out of school, knew nothing about it, and I don't have any business training. That was when I really started to diversify the company, which was one of the best moves I could have made, because we were able to take advantage of a common (network) infrastructure, a common finance and a common customer-care platform and really sell into all these different markets. We really ran the company very well for a couple of years. The next big event, I would say, was in the fall of '06, when we first took a major financing of the company. We took on bank debt and acquired the Yak Communications brand in an all-cash deal. It was roughly Cdn$76 million - US$68 million. The Canadian dollar was slightly weaker at the time. That was all financed with bank debt from Canadian banks."

12. What wireless rights have you acquired?

"We have provisionally won licences across the country, with the exception of southern Quebec. We have population coverage of approximately 25 million. We've paid a total $442 million for those licenses. We're very comfortable with the purchase price. There's been a lot of speculation out there about the cost of the spectrum being so high. What does that mean for Canadians? I really think the auction commanded the prices it did because the wireless market in Canada is very appealing. Very smart, sophisticated buyers, including the incumbents in Canada. I mean, 65 per cent of that auction was the incumbents in Canada, if you look at who paid what. Bell and Telus (paid) close to $800-$900 million each. The bulk of the auction was really in the hands of the incumbents."

13. What did you think of the auction process?

"Industry Canada did an excellent job of structuring that auction to attract new capital. It attracted Globalive and some of the regional cable companies. A lot of these new parties won spectrum and these new entrants, including Globalive, are well capitalized. So this is all good news for Canadians. At the end of the day, I don't believe we're going to have a scenario like we had in the past with Microcell and Clearnet, where they were consolidated by the incumbents and prices went back up. We're in this business for the long haul.

"I just turned 34. I've been an entrepreneur for the past 10 years, building my business. I have no intention of stopping anytime soon. I brought in partners who have global buying power. The partners have a track record of success. They're currently involved with nine wireless companies, but they've bought and sold and been investors in a total of over 40 wireless companies and various telcos all over the world."

14. Many people believe this wireless auction will lead to the emergence of a fourth major telephone carrier, wireless or otherwise. Are you trying to become the fourth major carrier?

"Well, we've acquired the most licences. We're the only (newcomer) with national coverage with the exception of Quebec. We've got a business plan in place and financing to back up that plan to be Canada's next national carrier. We've said publicly that we want to generate partnerships. Our business plan doesn't depend on them, but we would like to develop partnerships and relationships. We will be Canada's fourth national wireless company. We are (already) starting as Canada's fourth largest wireless company without Quebec. But we certainly are committed for the long term. We believe we've got the operating strength, the financial strength and the operating knowledge of Canada and the customer base here. When you really look at what we bring to the table, versus a new entrant or even an incumbent in Canada, we really believe we've got the winning formula. That all being said, we're extremely respectful and mindful of the strength of the incumbent operators. Let's be honest here. These guys are big, very smart operators, they've got great companies, they run great companies and they're very profitable. We know we're the new kid on the block and we know we've got to earn business. But I've always done that, so I'm not afraid of that."

15. Is it scary, trying to take on these large companies?

"I don't think I'm scared at all. I'm excited about it actually. Do I think that there's an opportunity to go head to head with them? No. We're the new entrant in wireless. We need to be out there earning Canadians' respect and earning Canadians' business. So we're not at all going to go head to head with them, not that I'm scared to compete with them.

It's just that I think it's a suicide mission to compete with them directly. They can win a war of attrition against you. They've got the size, they're entrenched in the market and they've got all the customer relationships."

16. Why is your focus on small- and medium-sized businesses?

"We think that small and medium businesses - in both wireless and wireline - have been left behind by the big phone companies in Canada. Why have they been left behind? Well, they get treated similar to a residential customer. The five-10-15-line customer, a 20-30-40-person office customer, is really important to us. That's revenue that's meaningful to us. There's lots of room here for the big guys. They don't have service offerings that are tailored to that market. We specialize in that market, we're focused on that market and we're committed to it. If you look at our relative size, our differentiator is service. And speed. If we don't win on those two things, what are we really left with?" 17. Now that you have these new wireless licences, how do you plan to be different, in terms of what you offer, from other companies?

"When I was getting into the wireless business, I said: 'What kind of partner do I need?' I found Orascom Telecom Holding (of Egypt) and was able to partner with them. They bring the financial strength. The second thing is: What do customers really want? I started reaching out to Canadians myself. I always have talked to Canadians since I started the company. I've always called customers. I've called the Yak customers, I've called business customers (and asked): Can you tell me about what you like and what you dislike in wireless? I was amazed at how much people had to say. That was a catalyst for a website we have out there now called Wireless Soapbox.com. We've already differentiated ourselves (by listening) to Canadians. Step 1 is: Stop telling Canadians what they want and start listening to what they want. All of the ... price plans, contract structure and these things, that's just marketing and packaging. Canadians are telling us they want a next-generation network, they want a quality network, they want a good customer experience and they don't want to be tied into long-term contracts. Those are the fundamentals that I think we can build our business on."

18. How would you describe your management style?

"I'm a person that really trusts the team. I put a lot of power in the hands of the team. I'm not a real control-type manager at all. That rule of thumb - always hire people that are smarter than you - is the simplest rule a manager has. My style is, basically, just consensus-builder. Co-operate with the team."

19. Why did you start the Shamba Foundation?

"The Shamba Foundation is really all about helping charities raise money. I built my Toronto headquarters to be an event venue for charities. We give it to charities at zero cost. All of my staff volunteer at the fundraising at the event and then I get liquor, beer, wine and food sponsors. Whatever the charity sells as ticket sales through an event, 100 per cent goes to their cause. It's been a great cultural enhancement for Globalive."

20. If you weren't running Globalive anymore, what would you do?

"I would have to start another company, because I don't think I could get a job. I don't think anyone would ever hire me. I'm too motivated by getting out there and doing things. I'm speaking facetiously ... I would probably look for the next opportunity."

Anthony Lacavera

* Born/raised/age: Welland, Ont./34.

* Education: Electrical engineering degree from the University of Toronto.

* Family: Single.

* Career: In late 1997 and early 1998, after graduating from university, Lacavera launched a communications company that became the forerunner of Globalive.

* Moonlighting: Lacavera is the founder of the Shamba Foundation. Shamba, the Swahili word for farm, attempts to mobilize business networks that raise money for charities. It also provides a venue at its Toronto headquarters, free of charge, where charities host fundraising events, and negotiates sponsorships with food and beverage contracts so that most or all of an event's proceeds go to the charitable organizations. He also sits on a series of private- and public-company boards.

* Awards: Globalive has been ranked as one of Canada's 50 Best Managed Companies, Top 30 Best Workplaces, 50 Hottest Startups and Canadian Technology Fast 50. Chairman and CEO Lacavera has also earned a Canada's Top 40 Under 40 honour.

* Passions: Developing Canadian entrepreneurs, hockey, skiing, golf, working out.

Globalive Communications

* Brass: Anthony Lacavera, chairman and CEO; Ezio D'Onofrio, president and chief operating officer; Brice Scheschuk, chief financial officer and head of human resources.

* Profile: Toronto-based Globalive is a diversified telecommunications service provider that sells standard telephone, long-distance, internet and other services to businesses, including many major Canadian hotels. It also sells consumer services through its wholly owned Yak subsidiary, including Yak home phone, internet and long-distance services. Globalive was recently awarded a wireless spectrum contract from the federal government and hopes to develop Yak into Canada's fourth largest wireless firm. In addition to Toronto, the firm has offices in Montreal, Vancouver, Edmonton and Winnipeg.

* Stats: Globalive's customers include 5,000 small- to medium-sized businesses, 2,800 hotels and one million Yak consumers. The parent company generated $125 million in revenue in 2007.

* Corporate Structure: Private company.

* Website: www.globalive.com * HQ: 48 Yonge Street Suite 1000 Toronto, M5E1G6 * Phone: 1-877-445-8606 (Monte Stewart can be reached at monte@businessedge.ca)