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While still in high school, Matthew Hill started a business. Ten years later, Liquid Web, Inc. is a multimillion-dollar, international corporation.
"We are a Web hosting and data center," Hill, now Liquid Web's CEO, explained. "We essentially are the 'other side' of the Internet. We are where websites live."
Liquid Web currently has 3,000 servers on two local sites, which have multiple levels of "redundancy" or duplication to make sure that data or websites are not interrupted, even when a server malfunctions.
"Our clients probably wouldn't even notice," said Hill.
The company has support staff on-site 24 hours a day, has emergency generator backup systems, and implements extensive security measures to protect its equipment and the data that it holds.
"We host a quarter of a million websites between our two data centers," said Hill. "Our customer base is global. We're about 80 percent U.S. based. Even in the United States, our concentration is in California and New York. Michigan is our third largest customer. We'll probably be north of $11 million in revenue this year, and we're almost doubling each year.
"We also deal with disaster recovery or providing an offsite data center for people who need security," he continued. "If you have all of your client records and all of your data on-site, and your building burns down, an organization disappears overnight."
Since Hill grew up...