Ever heard of the “Paypal Mafia?” It’s the Silicon Valley moniker for the early leadership team at PayPal that subsequently went on to launch other top tech ventures such as LinkedIn, Youtube and Yelp. The Paypal Mafia is a great example of how one highly successful venture can spawn many others by serving as a training ground for future entrepreneurs.
In the Upstate, we’ve seen similar economic phenomena arising from one company, Datastream, an enterprise software company founded in 1986 by Larry Blackwell that went public in 1995. At that time, Datastream employed over 600 people, including 250 at the headquarters in Greenville. Today, it continues as a major employer in the area as a division of Infor, which acquired it in 2006.
Datastream employed over 600 people, including 250 at the headquarters in Greenville.
As impactful as the company was on our region’s economy directly, it’s greatest legacy may very well be the many employees who worked there that are now leading our region’s entrepreneur ecosystem. There are approximately 65 founders, co-founders and/or C-suite executives that have emerged from the Datastream leadership tree to date including:
- Larry Blackwell, who became an active investor and mentor to numerous startups in the area investing around $6 million in 12 area firms.
- Alex Estevez, former Datastream CFO and president, who went on to serve as CFO for San Francisco unicorn (privately-held startup worth more than $1 billion) Atlassian Software before returning to Greenville as a venture partner with Accel and chairing NEXT Venture Pitch plus Venture Atlanta.
- Scott Millwood, former Datastream Sales & Marketing SVP, sold his first software company to Hitachi in 2014 and is currently scaling YesFlow. He was a founding entrepreneur with NEXT and has been its board chair the last three years.
- Marty Osborne, former Datastream VP of Product Strategy, is president of Advoco, a local technology company that was recently acquired by Accenture.
And there are many more like John Sterling, Lisa Anderson, Michael Elliott, and Reed Wilson who are doing great things and leading by example in our dynamic business community.
It’s amazing what one company can do for our economy. Though companies like Datastream are rare, their impact is generational.
John Moore is a principal with Momenteum Strategies, an Upstate-based consulting firm specializing in helping communities and their economic development organizations build thriving, impactful innovation ecosystems.
