MATTHEW HILL:
 
MATTHEW HILL




 
 
 
 
 
Founder and CEO of Liquid Web Inc. in Lansing. Consistently ranked on the Inc. 5000 since 2006, Liquid Web reported 239 percent revenue growth to reach $26 million in 2009, up from $7.7 million in 2006. Founded in 1997 when Hill was 16, the company now has 199 employees in offices in Lansing and Scottsdale, Ariz. Liquid Web is recognized as a leader in the web hosting market, serving 20,000 clients in more than 100 countries. The company plans to hire hundreds more in the next few years. In 2000, Hill opened Liquid Web ’s first office to meet customer demand for managed hosting products and then established the first Liquid Web data center, the 6,000-sq.-ft. DC1 to widen the company ’s technology offerings. Next came DC2, a 32,000-sq.-ft. data center that housed 8,000 additional client servers. Liquid Web ’s third data center, 90,000 sq. ft. in size, opened in 2009 with a capacity for 25,000 servers. Hill was named a 2010 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalist in the Michigan and Northwest Ohio region. In 2010, LiquidWeb received the Best Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting Award from Web Hosting Clue. Liquid Web also was named in Lead411’s “Hottest Companies in the Midwest” list. Hill has been recognized as one of the “10 Over the Next 10” by the Lansing Regional Chamber, Greater Lansing Business Monthly, and the Grand River Connection.


WHERE BORN: “Lansing. I grew up in Holt.”

MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSONS: “I’m pretty independent. I started companies when I was a teenager. I’ve had a lot of great employees and experiences with them but no influences that drove me in that direction.”

LAST BOOK READ: “The Physics of Consciousness: The Quantum Mind and the Meaning of Life by Evan Harris Walker.”

WORDS THAT DESCRIBE ME: “Tireless and motivated, a little bit obsessive – you need to be to build something large.”

WHERE MY FIELD/INDUSTRY IS HEADED: “Mass market hosting is outpacing the economy. It will continue to accelerate while things continue to move into the cloud and out of the server room. It offers a lot of game changers for SMBs – virtualization and automation through leveraging the cloud.”

FAVORITE TECHNOLOGICAL GADGET: “My cell phone. It’s on the Android platform. I do everything on it, from communication to information.”

FAVORITE PLACE: “Lansing and Scottsdale – where our offices are.”

FAVORITE HOBBIES: “I work and exercise a lot with strength training – not a lot outside of that.”

FAVORITE FOOD: “Definitely sashimi and sushi.”

MY HIDDEN TALENT: “I can bench twice my body weight.”

HOW I WANT TO BE REMEMBERED: “As a leader that people can identify with – very real and grounded. That I worked with people instead of above them. At the base of it all, the best solution lies between two people.”


Grant Thornton Website At the annual awards reception in April 2014, one Leader & Innovator from the previous 12 months will be selected as the Grant Thornton Leader & Innovator of the Year.