LAEN News:
CEO John Rice of Coca Cola Bottling Company of Santa Fe, a New Mexico company founded 93 years ago, will speak at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 27 at The Hive, 134 N.M. 4 in White Rock.
The public is invited to attend Rice’s presentation to the Los Alamos Entrepreneurs’ Network (LAEN) in which he will speak on the process of building and exiting a company with the help and hindrance of outside investors: financing from venture capital and other sources, investment deal making: the management rewards and complications that follow in maturing a company with outside investors; and exit realities.
“If you have ever considered soliciting outside capital to help start or grow your business, this presentation is a must,” LAEN President Andy Andrews said.
Rice is founder and CEO of ASi/Q, a 20 year-old firm specializing in operations management services ranging from launching successful startups and executing business turnarounds to financings, crisis management and the repositioning of enterprises for sale at optimum market prices.
Successful companies have included enterprises in radio, television, cable television, and print media, home health care, Internet medical claims filing, Internet based medical information and services, manufacturing of electronics, jet engine test equipment, black boxes, and industrial overhead cranes, home improvement products, industrial security, and regional satellite communications.
As Board Chair, interim CEO, Director in Charge of the Audit Committee, and in other similar capacities, Rice has been instrumental in building as well as negotiating investor exits for a number of companies from (re)start-up into enterprises yielding up to $160 million in investor returns.
First trained in turnarounds and then in venture capital investment, Rice is expert in creating an atmosphere of confident urgency based on financial plans that keep the fundamentals fundamental, upon sales and marketing strategies that rapidly accomplish goals, and upon strategies that lead/drive companies to perform.
As a strategic thinker and problem solver, Rice is often brought into companies on special assignment in order to help resolve crises and sensitive conflict issues as well as to develop new business strategies and initiatives.
In his capacity as a discreet negotiator/facilitator for crisis resolution, Rice has served clientele ranging from the Fortune 500 to start-ups, and handled problems ranging from executive succession and terminations, to litigation settlement, to formulation and execution of growth ‘breakout strategies,’ to negotiations of company sales, divestitures, and acquisitions.
Rice has worked on diverse short-term turn-around and special business target assignments a few of which include: guiding operational start-up of Connection Cablevision in Newark, N.J., managing the troubled company divestiture of cable TV properties in the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas; mediating disputed business elements of the re-acquisition by Pizza Hut of its then largest multi-state, multi-national franchisee, the sale of Pueblo Broadcasting in Houston; and as CEO, repairing emerging technology companies in New Jersey, San Antonio, Texas and Albuquerque.
Rice lectures frequently on breakout growth strategies, crisis management, corporate turnarounds, venture capital and financial structuring and strategies.
He is an honors graduate of Harvard College and lives with his family of four in Albuquerque. He is a voracious reader, expert skier, avid bicyclist and pathetic golfer.
