 Welcome to our latest episode of the Columbia Economic Development Rethink Business Podcast. My name is Ryan Coleman and I'm the Director of Economic Development for the City of Columbia and today we've got a very special guest, somebody that I've had the pleasure and the opportunity to work with on several occasions. Sam McGookin. Sam is the Executive VP for CapGemini, their Insurance Technology Division here in Columbia, South Carolina. And so it's a really exciting opportunity to have you here as well. I know you've got a lot of background in that industry in here in the City of Columbia and I think you've got a really great story to tell folks. So first of all, thank you for taking some time out of your day. Absolutely, happy to do it Ryan. It's good to be here. Awesome. So let's just jump right in. You've got a long career in this industry. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started in insurance tech. You know, what what drew you to that industry? When I was 18 or 19, I could not imagine being doing anything in the insurance industry, not after having to scrape together enough money to buy automobile insurance and being so bitter about that. But that's exactly what happened. So when I graduated college of Charleston with a degree in computer science and a friend told me about policy management systems here in Columbia, South Carolina. And I joined them in 1984 and worked there 22 years before the founder of PMSC Larry Wilson invited me to join his next adventure, which was Duck Creek Technology, another insurance tech company. And then from there we sold that company to Accenture and then I started up my own company TQ. So it's just been a career, I guess, 33 years all in the insurance tech space. You spent almost enough time working at PMSC to go ahead and retire from there and you've, I guess, continued to stretch that career out since then. So having spent a lot of that time working in a corporate structure and then you just spun out and started your own business. And that's kind of a there's a lot of work involved. That's a pretty brave thing, you know, for people to do. So what why'd you decide to just kind of go it on your own? I think you figure out things about yourself as you progress your career. And what I finally figured out was I was better at being an entrepreneur in a smaller company than being, you know, a manager in a very large company. So after joining Duck Creek, which is a pretty small company, I think at the time they had 200 employees. And I took a pretty big role there helping them build the company up to the point where we could sell it to Accenture. And then as part of that, I signed a contract with Accenture to stay on for three years. But I absolutely hated it. It's hard to go from running a small company to being a cog in the machine in the big one. And I think that says more about me and that does about Accenture because Accenture is a fine company. But they were kind enough to let me out of that contract. And I decided that I wanted to get back into a small company. So I started my own T cube solutions exact same kind of work all insured tech and insurance technology, helping insurance companies automate their systems. We started with three people here in Columbia and 40 that 40 of my friends that I knew in India. And we grew it up to 350. And then as you know, we ended up selling that company to Capgemini last year. Yep, you've been incredibly successful with that. But entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. I mean, you're you're really jumping into the deep end of the pool with that. And certainly throughout your time running TQ, you know, you probably had many challenges that you face growing that. And we work with a lot of entrepreneurs here in our office. So we see that as well. What are some of the big challenges that you encountered as you scaled up your business? Well, the first thing I would say is that we were very fortunate in that we we got involved in the the USC business incubator program. And I think there were some surprises along the way that that we needed to deal with. And any entrepreneur will laugh when they they hear me describe the learning process I went through. You think your job one is to go out and sell, sell your business and grow it. But there's jobs two through 99 that have to get done, payroll, rent, facilities, all the boring stuff. And so it was quite challenging. It's a big distraction to growing your business. If you're worried about buying office furniture and copiers and finding an accountant and getting some lawyers and dealing with payroll companies and all that sort of stuff that's got to get done. And so that was a big challenge early on. And we wisely outsource that for the most part. We found a great accountant Faulkner, Pete Beatrice and Stormer. Tom Beatrice. Yeah. Yeah. Tom Beatrice's organization shout out to him. He's a great guy that does a lot of work with a lot of local entrepreneurs and has been very helpful in that space. He's awesome. And Tom volunteers down at the incubator, which is how we met him. So he does volunteer work for small startup companies are struggling. And as soon as we met him, we knew that's that's what we needed to do just handed off to he's a great coach, great advisor. So not only did he do what we paid him for, but he gave us all a lot of free consultants. Well, great, great guy and great firm. We found a payroll company to handle that. My wife mercifully joined the company and took over the back office. And she is much more patient and dealing with those sorts of things than I am. And that freed me up to go back out on the road and drive the top line, which is critical. And my best advice to anybody starting up a company, focus on selling and figure out how to handle the other stuff some other way. Yeah, just just knowing you and your personality, you know, running towards entrepreneurship is is not something about you that surprises me. But wanting to get away from the kind of the monotony of the operational stuff is not your cup of tea. Well, there's an element of it that is the challenge. You know, I think a lot of us need a bigger and bigger challenge. Starting up a company is definitely a challenge. And I think that kind of fed a need that I had to do that as well. So you had a great partnership with the USC Columbia Technology Incubator. And, you know, obviously, they were very instrumental in helping you over the years grow TQ. But what are some of the other relationships you've developed with the University of South Carolina? Because obviously they're a big source for for talent. They sure are. You know, USC is the best thing that Columbia has going in terms of workforce development and attracting business to South Carolina. And you know, this is something you and I've talked about this, we collectively we need to do a better job of marketing USC as part of business development in South Carolina. So I guess I kind of stumbled into it because I was in the USC business incubator, Bill Kirkland was there. And I needed some, you know, young talent part time, that sort of thing. And he was the guy that suggested we look to USC for some interns. And as soon as we tapped into that, we realized that that's a gold mine. I mean, there's so many bright kids down there. And then we started thinking about how do we how do we sort of get to know USC better all the different departments, the insurance and risk management department that Greg Nehouse, Dr. Greg Nehouse runs and he's incredible. The engineering department, computer science. So we started building a relationship with the deans at USC and with Eris Bastidis, and trying to understand how to navigate those different organizations, and all the offerings they have, it's not just that you can hire some of their interns, they actually will do capstone projects, all kinds of things with you that you can leverage to grow your business. And I'll just summarize it by saying one of the cool things about this is you can bring in an intern part time during your senior year. They get a look at you and your company and you get a look at them. And then when they graduate, you sort of inserted yourself between them and all the on campus recruiting companies. And you're much more likely to get a top grade student that way. And it's very competitive for talent out there. So being able to kind of get in front of these kids before they graduate and start making long term career decisions is a, that's a big advantage if you can wield it properly. Absolutely. The best thing we did was get involved with USC and figure out how to create that workforce development pipeline. So let's fast forward a little bit. You grow to cube. You start courting interest in businesses and wind up being acquired by Capgemini and move over to Bull Street and coincidentally, on the back end of that, Capgemini announces another expansion here in the Columbia area with their tech center. But tell us a lot of people don't get to go through the M&A process. So tell us a little bit about kind of the acquisition, how that worked out and then the following expansion after that. And I think that last part is the most important. But I will tell you honestly, we did not expect to get acquired when we started the company. We thought it would be a small adventure and maybe we would exit by selling to the younger managers and moving on. But that was not the case. Two years in, we attracted a lot of attention. We never used a business broker. We never went looking for an acquisition. They came to us and 14 different companies approached us with expressions of interest without boring you with why it's just that we did one thing, one very specific thing, kind of like a boutique, and we were incredible at it. I mean, no false monstery. We were the best in the industry. There's one thing which attracted these very big companies that do a lot of things. And by acquiring us, it got them inside of some of the big insurance companies in the United States and around the world. And once they're in, they can offer all those other things. So it's a great way for them to get into a large insurance company and then offer their other services. So it was only a matter of time before we were in a position to sell the company. The M&A process, I think is, you know, what you would expect. There's a lot of back and forth, a lot of time with lawyers and that sort of thing. But what was really interesting to me is, as we went through that process, Cap Gemini, who was the company we finally decided to go with, they discovered Columbia, South Carolina. They're a huge multi-billion dollar company. They were initially interested in the one thing we do for the insurance industry. But after they saw how we leveraged the University of South Carolina, after they saw the city, the state and the county support us with economic incentives, after they saw a relationship with local government, used in Benjamin, they got really excited about expanding their footprint here in Columbia. At the same time, they were looking at five other cities around the U.S. and they selected Columbia and now they've expanded their footprint out on the Bull Street campus as a result. And I know from our process and our side working through that, you know, it's usually tough just to get on that short list of five companies to be kind of brought in at the end of that is a very unique situation. I think certainly the timing of that was really fortuitous and it worked out incredibly well in our favor. It did. And I think we can expand on that. I think it's all about fostering a relationship on those, those dimensions, in particular with USC, right? Because what these big global systems integrators, you know, Accenture, PWC, Deloitte, Capchamp and I, what they need is young, highly skilled talent out of the university, the engineering guys, insurance, the risk management guys, the Darla Moore Business School guys. They need that talent and it's all about fostering a relationship with USC so you can get access to the best talent. And then convincing that talent to stay here in Columbia. That's true. Got to keep more of those bright young kids here and, you know, the university is a big magnet for people who aren't from this state. So we bring them in. We just have to continue to capture them and keep them here. And for the ones that want to, you know, young people, I think, typically want to get out and see the world, you join a company like Capchamp and I, you're going to see the world because they're in 44 countries. They want you, many of the people that they have, they want you to be on the road, maybe relocating to London, New York, you know, California, wherever. They'll put you all over the place because they do business all throughout the world. So you can stay in Columbia and work for them or you can join Cap and see the world. Let's talk a little bit about your space at the first base building because a lot of folks that we have conversations with that have had the opportunity to see the third floor are just really impressed with the open floor plan, the layouts, you know, the electric rising desk. You've got a lot of very innovative stuff over there. And that certainly helps y'all attract that, you know, creative class millennial level of talent that y'all are looking for. So, you know, what was your decision, you know, to do the space as uniquely as you did? Well, as interesting as the incubator property was, we really needed something that was a little bit more open and modern looking. So when we thought about the Bull Street district and relocating out there, there were two big objectives we had. One was attracting talent from USC. So you have to have a workplace that is interesting to young people and causes them to want to be there. And the second thing is we wanted to showcase for customers because we bring customers to Columbia from all over the world. And what they're looking for is evidence of innovation and high tech and, you know, a really cool campus. And so the ballpark, not only, first of all, it's a beautiful building, beautiful furniture and set up inside. But then you have the whole Bull Street campus, the ball field, the concerts, that sort of thing. So we can invite clients in, do presentations, take them over to the ball field, do something maybe on the club level access, that sort of thing. Lots of opportunities there. But going back to the talent acquisition part, one of the things, and I think you know, we're looking to hire maybe 600 people over the next two years. One of the things that we need to be able to do is get the perspective USC student onto the campus. Because once they see the building and the facility, then they get very excited about it. And as you say, it's all high tech. It's, you know, I call it Google-like. It's all open floor plan, desks that rise and lower, you know, conference rooms, collaborative space, high tech equipment everywhere, video conferencing equipment that connects us to our customers or colleagues in offices all over the world. You know, the bathrooms have showers in them, you know, so you can go out and ride a bike or walk or do whatever you want at lunchtime and come back. It really is a neat campus. And when we get young people onto the floor and they see it, it's not what they expect. And it's a little bit of, you know, Google or California right here in Columbia. And I like that the main conference room looks directly over the ball field. So anytime you're in there and having a meeting, just the view over Spirit Communications Park. You're right. I mean, the whole front of the building looks down into the ballpark and instead of putting offices along there and blocking everybody's view, we left it open and we put the, there are no offices. We put conference rooms around the core, the center core of the building and left the perimeter open so you can, lots of sunlight, you can look out, lots to see. There are a couple, as you point out, a couple of conference rooms on the perimeter. But that's so that when we bring a client in, we can put them in that big conference room and let them see the outside as well. Yeah, that was a, that was a really neat way out decision to make it accessible to everybody. Yep. Now Capgemini has expanded to the second floor as well as I think you know, and we'll see where it goes from there. So you mentioned that y'all are continuing to expand, continuing to hire and add jobs, not just in your insurance tech division, but the tech delivery center as well below you. So what are y'all looking at for the next few years as far as specific jobs you're trying to fill or skill sets you're looking for? Because there may be some folks out there who would like to explore a career opportunity with Capgemini. It's a great question. There are all kinds of roles we're trying to fill. But I, I guess I would, I would say this, the group, the small group that I'm part of, which is just a piece of all of Capgemini, focuses on insurance. So we hire kids out of the young people out of the insurance and risk management school at USC and other colleges as well out of the business school, Darlmore School and IT skilled people as well. But the bigger part of Cap which is the part that's expanding the most here in Columbia serves all industries, not just insurance, but telecom, defense, everything. And so broadly speaking, what they do is they do a lot of technology development. They'll help companies migrate their applications into the cloud. They'll help them build cloud applications. They do all sorts of largely cloud-based work for all kinds of different industries. And the students that they're looking for could be IT. They could be pure computer science, but they could be IT. They could be business students because we have to have analysts and project leaders and account managers and that sort of thing. So pretty much we take people out of all parts of all the disciplines at USC, but you can think of it as kind of a pyramid. You need a few of the business guys, more of the IT guys and that sort of thing. Sure. Well, that's all we've got for today. I think we covered a lot in the podcast here. But certainly, as always, thank you for taking time out to come and speak with me. We really appreciate it. Appreciate what you've done, how you've managed to grow your business and be successful here in Columbia. And we're thankful to have a great corporate partner like CapGemina as part of the business ecosystem. So thanks for coming. Me too. Thank you, Ryan. Take care.