Throughout his career, Lance Custen has increasingly found better ways to emphasize his core strengths and special knowledge. His successes in the fields of technology and realty are fueled by a genuine fascination with refining digital business in order to simplify people’s lives.
Lance spent his early childhood in New England – New York and Vermont. Eventually his family moved to South Florida, where he graduated from Boca Raton’s Academy High School. In Boca Raton, Custen also met Brent Oxley, the chairman and founder of a company he would serve and help to grow for almost 10 years.
Custen’s first management position, though, was in retail and stretched from 2002 to 2004. He managed four stores that were authorized retailers of T-Mobile and AT&T cellphones. After trying his hand at management, Lance felt ready to take on the responsibility of ownership. He eventually owned two phone stores as the head of Cellular Wireless while developing his recruiting skills as the Director of Admissions for Academy High School, his alma mater.
From the cellphone management role and his school administrative position, Lance made an abrupt career shift that changed the direction of his life. He was hired by Oxley as the Chief Operating Officer of HostGator in 2004. In that position, Custen was in charge of day-to-day operations as well as customer service and the organization’s affiliate relationships.
Transitioning into the CEO position, Custen led the executive team of HostGator while the company quickly made a name for itself as an Internet powerhouse. Between the organization’s founding in 2002 and 2006, the hosting service skyrocketed to 200,000 registered domains. Lance shepherded the company as it made a huge and critical transition: moving the headquarters from Boca Raton to a new 20,000-square-foot office building in Houston. He also oversaw the establishment of other HostGator offices – including one in nearby Austin, Texas (2010); one in India (2011); and one in Singapore (2013).
As the organization’s chief, Lance proved his leadership strengths in the areas of strategy, marketing, product development, and human resources. With his guidance, the company grew at an astronomical pace. In fact, Inc. magazine estimated in 2008 that the company was growing faster than any other firm in the Houston metro area (spanning from Sugarland to Baytown) and was actually the 21st fastest growing company nationwide. Custen was also instrumental in the implementation of a major sustainability initiative that year, in which the company transitioned to green hosting.
In 2012, Custen was appointed the Senior Vice President of International Operations for Endurance International Group. He helped the company to acquire HostGator and then directed the company’s operations in Brazil, India, and Turkey.
Also during his time at HostGator, Lance became the President of Brent Oxley’s Oxley Real Estate. In that role, which he held from 2006 to 2012, he was responsible for acquisitions, operations, leasing, and sales of more than half a million square feet of commercial real estate – knowledge that would prove fundamental in one of his future ventures, Realty.com.
As the President and Chief Executive Officer at Realty.com, Custen is leading the integration of more than 800 MLS providers around the United States. Through this broad effort, he is making it possible to provide the quickest and most comprehensive search of properties, realtors, and mortgages on the market. In other words, he is achieving his mission of using technology to expedite business, simplify interactions, and improve quality-of-life.
