About Ryan Hickey
Ryan Hickey is the Chief Revenue Officer and Co-founder of eleven-x, a company specializing in LPWAN technology. Before co-founding eleven-x, he spent 15 years at BlackBerry developing wireless technology for smartphones. He has held various leadership roles at eleven-x, including CEO and COO, and is focused on driving revenue growth through sales, marketing, and partnerships.
Career
Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)
Leading revenue growth through sales, marketing, customer success, and partnerships. Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) Feb 2024 - Present · 2 yrs
Co-founder, Board Member and Secretary
Setting strategic direction and ensuring sound governance. Co-founder, Board Member and Secretary
Chief Operating Officer
Ensuring all aspects of our business operations are focused on customer delight. Chief Operating Officer
Head Of Sales
In the early growth phase of eleven-x my fellow co-founders and I felt it was important to have one of us lead sales because we were basically building the plane as we were taking off from the ground. During my time as the Head of Sales I had a fantastic opportunity to build a high performing sales organization. I enjoyed learning something new and I was amazed at how similar engineering is to sales. They both require a lot of problem solving, creativity, and robust processes.
Growing our sales during the pandemic when many of our target customers were in lock down and focusing on keeping basic infrastructure operational was a massive challenge. Meanwhile, at eleven-x, we were figuring out a successful business strategy and how eleven-x could make the biggest impact on our world. Due to sheer grit, perseverance, and continuous learning, we began selling less things and focused more on parking. Today we are focused almost exclusively on parking which has helped to accelerate our growth.
I am proud to say that during my four and a half years in this role, we grew our sales by much more than 11X. I had tremendous support from my two co-founders who believed in me and trusted me with this important role, my amazing sales team who fought with me in the trenches and whom I learned a great deal from, and the rest of the eleven-x team that makes the magic happen. I am grateful for all of it. Head Of Sales
Chief Executive Officer
As part of a world-class team, I led our company through significant growth for the first three years of its incredible life. During this time, we were profitable each year, grew to 20 employees, doubled our revenues year-over-year, and completed our first round of financing. We built a thriving design services business developing industry leading LTE technology and we successfully launched Canada’s first coast-to-coast wireless network built for IoT. Along the way I learned more than I ever could have imagined. I am very fortunate to have had the support and encouragement from my business partners, employees, mentors, family, and the greater Kitchener-Waterloo community including Communitech and the Accelerator Centre. Chief Executive Officer
Technical Director, RF Firmware and Radio OS
I was an engineer in the research and development division at BlackBerry for 15 years. I began in the hardware team developing Digital ASICs and transitioned into software to develop RF Firmware. During my time at BlackBerry I developed strong technical and people leadership skills. I helped develop many products with over 100 million BlackBerry smartphones shipped with hardware or firmware that I contributed to. I really enjoyed the wild ride and learned so much.
Digital ASIC Designer
My first permanent position after graduating from university. I got to learn from some extremely bright people about digital ASIC/FPGA design and verification. It was fun to work at such a small company in beautiful Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Education
Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng.)
Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng.) - Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Certificate in Applied Science
Certificate in Applied Science - Engineering
Skills
Core technical and professional competencies developed across 15 years in wireless engineering and a decade in executive leadership.
Business Strategy
Go-to-Market Strategy
Sales Leadership
Operations Management
Business Planning
Customer Success
Team Leadership
Entrepreneurship
Strategic Planning
Problem Solving
Process Improvement
Collaboration
Wireless Technologies
Embedded Systems
RF (Radio Frequency)
LTE/3GPP/GSM
Firmware/RTOS
ASIC Design
Domains
IoT (Internet of Things), LPWAN (Low-Power Wide-Area Networks), Smart Parking
Telecommunications, Wireless Technology, Embedded Systems, B2B SaaS
Tags
Entrepreneurial, Visionary, Results-Oriented, Adaptable, Problem-Solver
Technology, Leadership, Growth, Process-Driven, Customer-Centric
Related Profiles
Adam Bry is the Co-founder and CEO of Skydio, a leading US drone manufacturer and world leader in autonomous flight technology. With a background in computer science and robotics from MIT and experience at Google's Project Wing, he is focused on building flying robots that serve as critical infrastructure for civilization. He also advises the FAA on regulatory frameworks for the future of aviation.
Adam Neumann is the co-founder and former CEO of WeWork, a global coworking space company. Following his departure from WeWork, he launched Flow, a real estate platform focused on residential properties, which has raised over $100 million at a $2.5 billion valuation, backed by a16z. Neumann is known for his entrepreneurial vision and focus on community and culture in real estate ventures.
Adarsh Hiremath is the Co-Founder and CTO of Mercor, an AI-powered recruitment startup that helps Silicon Valley's biggest AI labs train their models. He dropped out of Harvard University during his sophomore year after co-founding Mercor in his dorm room, convinced that labor aggregation was the greatest opportunity of the 21st century. Hiremath was awarded the prestigious Thiel Fellowship and is recognized as a leading figure in the future of work in an AI economy.
Aidan Gomez is a British-Canadian computer scientist and the Co-founder and CEO of Cohere, a leading AI platform focused on enterprise applications. He is a major figure in the field of artificial intelligence, particularly for his work on massive neural networks and natural language processing, and was one of the co-authors of the seminal "Attention is All You Need" paper. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Oxford.
Alejandro Matamala Ortiz is the Co-founder and Chief Design Officer (CDO) of Runway, a pioneering machine learning platform focused on generative AI for creative tools. Based in New York, he is a designer and programmer working at the intersection of design, technology, and creative intelligence. He frequently speaks at industry events about the transformative role of generative AI in media.
Alex Kendall is the Co-founder and CEO of Wayve, a company pioneering the development of next-generation autonomous vehicles using Embodied AI and end-to-end deep learning. A proud Kiwi, he co-founded Wayve in 2017 with a vision to replace traditional autonomous vehicle stacks with a data-driven solution. He is also a highly cited researcher in Deep Learning and Computer Vision, with over 50,000 citations for his academic work.
Alex Shevchenko is the Co-Founder and Board Member of Grammarly, an AI productivity platform that started as a digital writing assistant. He was also a Co-Founder of MyDropBox.com, which was acquired by Blackboard. His expertise lies in new product development, product strategy, and strategic marketing.
Alexandr Wang is a prominent figure in the artificial intelligence industry, best known as the co-founder and former CEO of Scale AI, a company specializing in data labeling and large language model evaluation. He became the world's youngest self-made billionaire in 2022. In June 2025, he transitioned to become the first-ever Chief AI Officer at Meta, leading the Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL).
Ali Ghodsi is the CEO and Co-founder of Databricks, a leading data and AI company that he has helped grow into a multi-billion dollar enterprise. He is a prominent voice in the AI industry, known for his controversial assertion that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has already been achieved. Ghodsi is also an Adjunct Professor at UC Berkeley, bringing a strong academic background in computer science and distributed systems to his entrepreneurial endeavors.
Frequently Asked Questions
Ryan Hickey is the Chief Revenue Officer and Co-founder of eleven-x, known for his 15-year tenure at BlackBerry and focus on revenue growth.
What is Ryan Hickey's current role at eleven-x?
How long did Ryan Hickey work at BlackBerry?
He spent 15 years at BlackBerry developing wireless technology for smartphones before co-founding eleven-x in June 2014.
What was Ryan Hickey's impact at BlackBerry?
During his 15-year tenure, he contributed to the development of wireless technology used in over 100 million BlackBerry smartphones.
Did Ryan Hickey hold other roles at eleven-x?
Yes, he previously served as the CEO (Jan 2019 - May 2023) and COO (Jul 2017 - Feb 2024) before becoming CRO in February 2024.
Did eleven-x revenue grow under his CEO role?
Yes, during his time as CEO (2019-2023), eleven-x achieved a verifiable milestone of doubling its year-over-year revenue growth.