In 1996, Christopher Varenhorst got his first computer. And it wasn’t long before he was fixing those of others.
“I had a penchant to fix everything,” Varenhorst recalls.
Now, the 40-year-old entrepreneur is running a million-dollar company, applying his technical expertise and knowledge to solutions on a bigger scale: Bringing high-speed Internet service to rural Benzie County and other areas that are lacking.
It’s a mission and commitment to impact the quality of life and economic well-being of communities that have no high-performance broadband service or have few options. And it’s a team effort, said Varenhorst, who started Benzonia’s Eclipse Communications, Inc. in 2016 with one employee – himself – and now employs eight.
“We are all very passionate about what we do. We live in these communities; all of us know to some degree what it’s like not to have Internet service,” said Varenhorst, Eclipse’s president. “It is really rewarding to not only operate a profitable company that’s growing, but also directly impact everyone with the availability of our services.”
“We’re ambassadors of technology. We leverage technology and services in partnership and in true synergy with the needs of our clients.”
A broadband model that’s working
Eclipse’s wireless network spans terrain via communications towers that use microwave radio links to deliver broadband signals. It’s a model that has helped the company expand through areas where the absence of population density or the prominence of hills, trees and other topographical features can create unique challenges and difficulties for other broadband technologies.
In addition though, Eclipse over the last year and a half has been laying miles of fiber-optic cable where it can, to provide fiber connections to businesses and homes. Said Varenhorst: “Multiple forms of infrastructure is the most successful strategy going forward.”
It’s an important step under a memorandum of understanding Eclipse inked in 2019 with the Benzie County Economic Development Committee – a partnership toward expanding high-speed Internet access in the county and designating Eclipse as the independent contractor to help do so.
The addition of fiber at Eclipse is also the latest notch in an entrepreneurial growth trajectory for Varenhorst that was seeded years ago.
Venture North: a catalyst for growth
Venture North Funding & Development provided an approximately $200,000 loan that paid for a majority of the acquisition, with the remaining financing coming from Eclipse and a private individual. Eclipse also received a grant from Venture North that helped pay for professional services, including an attorney and business consultant.
Varenhorst said Venture North President Laura Galbraith and portfolio manager Sara Christensen were “professional, passionate individuals who were very important for us to fund the type of acquisition that we were trying to fund. They were there every step of the way and were fundamental to the success of the funding aspect of purchasing the company, from start to finish.”
He added that as a service business, a conventional financing path can be difficult. “It’s hard to acquire funding in our type of industry. We don’t have a shop floor full of machinery that can go on the auction block if we don’t meet our debts.”
Venture North – including how it operates and the funding sources to which it has access – was “phenomenal” to work with, Varenhorst said. “We will be working with them on anything that we can possibly work on with them going forward. They are first on our call list.”
In Benzie County, Venture North also manages the Community Development Block Grant Loan Program, a federally authorized program that provides small-business loans for a variety of business purposes, tied to job creation for low-to-moderate income individuals.
Eclipse received an initial $70,000 CDBG loan that enabled it to purchase heavy equipment and build infrastructure, hiring two people, and was recently approved for a second, $50,000 loan. Eclipse will use the money to purchase additional equipment it needs to build out its fiber network, with plans to hire two more employees.