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A moped would solve the problem, he thought. But mopeds, especially affordable ones, were hard to come by in Gainesville. So Antevy and a cousin, Asaf Levy, realized that by buying up ailing bikes elsewhere around the state, nursing them to health, and selling them at a price that still undercut the competition, they could turn a profit. Before long their extracurricular activities had raked in almost $10,000, which he and his cousin split. With his share, Antevy bought a Mac -- which led to an abiding interest in technology. "Jon was the most connected person I'd ever met. In 1993 he had a pager, a cell phone, and a Mac PowerBook that he toted around everywhere. And he was always on all of them at the same time," remembers David Gruber, e-Builder's chief technology officer and co-founder, who met Antevy through a program at the University of Florida that awarded professors mini-sabbaticals to enhance their technology skills. He headed the program and hired Antevy to train one of the professors. Gruber later got a job as an information technology consultant for IBM. DIRT CHEAP. The idea for e-Builder emerged out of their friendship. Antevy had always been interested in construction, ever since, as a child, he toted tool belts around on construction sites where his grandfather and uncle worked as contractors. His parents were real estate developers in Ft. Lauderdale. After graduating from college with an architecture degree, Antevy went to work for a succession of Florida construction companies as a construction planner. Later, at the M.E. Rinker Sr. School of Building Construction for his master's degree in construction management, he wrote a thesis that mapped out a multimedia computer system to streamline the construction process, which had long depended on phone calls and haphazard meetings at construction sites. In 1994, Antevy and Gruber decided to build a system for managing construction projects via the Internet. Today, it's a small but promising company that dreams of revolutionizing the $1.7 trillion commercial construction industry. Using the e-builder tools, all the companies involved in a particular construction project can communicate and coordinate their activities -- potentially avoiding costly mistakes and shaving weeks or even months off the time it takes to put up a building. The company, which has 65 employees, has been profitable since 1998 and expects to rake in revenues in excess of $10 million in 2001. While revenues are still tiny, Antevy's company has already played a key role in some sizable construction projects. One example: the Los Angeles Staples Center, a $500 million sports-and-entertainment complex that seats up to 20,000 people and is home to the Los Angeles Lakers. "By using e-Builder, we had an extremely fast construction schedule. An arena of that complexity has never been built in that time frame before," says Robert Hayes, project scheduler for the Staples Center. The project took just 18 months, linked 150 construction team members, and generated 3,600 requests for information. Using e-Builder, the project managers estimate they trimmed two weeks off the time it took to complete it -- saving approximately $40,000 a day in late fees. Compared with the price of massive projects like the Staples Center, e-Builder's services are dirt cheap. For the Staples Center project there was an $8,000 setup fee and a monthly fee of $750. Setup fees for most projects are about $1,500, and monthly fees, which depend on the number of users, are about $725, says Antevy. CONVINCING CALLUSES. Over the years, Antevy's background in the construction business has helped him land customers. Gruber recalls one incident in particular: "We were in New York in the executive boardroom of one of the top construction companies, and an old stodgy VP says to Jon, 'Come here, let me see your hands.' The calluses on Jon's hands got that guy to say O.K.," Gruber says. Antevy's deep constuction roots also helped persuade The McGraw-Hill Companies (parent of Business Week magazine and Business Week Online) in May, 2000, to choose e-Builder from more than 60 sites vying for its investment capital, says Norbert Young, president of McGraw-Hill's Construction Information Group. "I've been out to talk to customers with Jon, and it's easy to see what an advantage his background brings in terms of customer comfort levels," says Young. McGraw-Hill's infusion of several million dollars for expansion was the first capital to come from outside investors, says Antevy. Prior to that, all growth had come through the company's own business. McGraw-Hill, owner of Construction.com, the largest construction Web site on the Internet, expects through the deal to combine the services of e-Builder with the information and content of Construction.com and drive traffic from one site to the other. To drum up business, Antevy is on the road 300 days a year, traveling from city to city, convincing sometimes hard-to-sway contractors that their operations would be better handled with the aid of computers. His older brother, Ron, hears complaints about that from their mother, Victoria Antevy. "Whenever I see her, she asks, 'When are you going to get him off the road?'" he says with a groan. Jon Antevy says he hopes things will slow down eventually, but his big brother isn't buying it. "I don't think he ever wants it to change," says Ron. Well, one thing is decidedly different since his school days: The young CEO long ago gave up his moped for a car. Brown covers e-business for Business Week in New York |
