Star exec takes new role

The fast growth at Datum Corp., a Lakewood Ranch-based IT services and software consulting firm, hit a new stratosphere with its latest executive hire.

The firm, with more than $30 million in sales last year, named Rob Campbell chief strategy officer in February. Campbell's business claim to fame is twofold. He was a product market manager at Apple in the early 1980s, where he worked directly for Steve Jobs. He was also a marketing director at Microsoft in the late 1980s, when he worked with Bill Gates. There's also this nugget: Campbell co-founded a firm in 1983, Forethought, which developed the programs PowerPoint and FileMaker.

Now Campbell will help Datum grow into new markets, and, eventually, get outside private equity funding. Datum, with clients that include breakfast-brunch-lunch chain First Watch, doubled sales in each of the past few years, says CEO Tom Frost. The 2014 first quarter has been the 11-year-old firm's best first quarter ever, Frost adds, and it could grow sales up to 40% this year.

Campbell, after being pulled out of semi-retirement, previously helped run Sarasota-based Voalte, an IT company with a focus on smartphone apps that help nurses communicate better. (Voalte recently announced it received a $36 million capital investment from a New York private equity firm. See page 23.) Campbell mentored Voalte's co-founder, Trey Lauderdale, and was the firm's CEO from 2008 to March 2013.

It was a mentor-mentee relationship that connected Frost and Campbell. The pair met through CEO roundtable sessions sponsored by GrowFl through the Economic Development Corp. of Sarasota County. They had lunch together a few times, when Frost peppered Campbell with questions. Frost then floated “a trial balloon” about a Datum job Campbell's way late last year. “When he saw the growth potential he decided to come on board,” Frost tells Coffee Talk.

Campbell says he's received “quite a few” similar requests — not surprising, given his successful track record. But Campbell, 61, says he admires Frost's ability to build Datum organically and how he's positioned the business in the marketplace, where it partners with clients on all things IT, not just troubleshoots. Campbell adds that since he's been where Frost is, he can provide some guidance on how the Datum executive can work on his business, not in it.

“I think I can help Tom avoid some obstacles and find some opportunities he might not see,” Campbell tells Coffee Talk. “My role is to help him look up and look out.”