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Oasis of the TITAN
From TN Business Magazine - September 2007
Ranked 8th in Entrepreneur magazine's 2006 "Hot Cities for Entrepreneurs" list, Nashville is one of the best places in the nation to start and grow a successful business. Entrepreneur Tim Stofka can prove it.
In 1995, a then 27-year-old Stofka and business partners Phil Ledbetter and Ken Nelson launched Oasis Software, a company specializing in system integration, custom application development and product distribution. With their ingenuity and the help of one of the Kauffman FastTrac® programs offered by the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, Stofka and Ledbetter (they bought Nelson out in 2000) not only ran a successful business for several years, but also were able to sell it to a company ready to expand its Nashville presence.
In 2000, the pair decided to enroll in FastTrac® GrowthVenture™ — one of the three Kauffman Foundation programs for entrepreneurs that the Nashville Chamber currently offers. The 10-week curriculum is designed to assist owners of existing businesses in improving strategic thinking skills and building a sustainable business.
When Stofka and Ledbetter enrolled in the program, they'd been in business for five years, but they hadn't put a business plan on paper.
"It forced us to work on business instead of in the business," Stofka says. Stofka adds that he and his partners walked away with more than a well-thought-out and researched business plan.
"It gave us agility and humility," Stofka says. "The agility to meet the changing needs of our customers, and the humility to admit that sometimes you may be trying to put a square peg in a round hole."
The owners have the results to show for it—by the end of 2001, Oasis Software had doubled in size and revenue, with more change on the horizon. By 2004, the majority of Oasis Software's business involved implementing PeopleSoft solutions. When Oracle acquired PeopleSoft that same year, Oasis partnered with Charlotte-based TITAN Technology Partners, an Oracle systems integrator, to weather the storm. In early 2005, TITAN made Stofka and Ledbetter an offer they could not refuse, and by June, TITAN had acquired Oasis. Before the merger, Stofka says TITAN, which now provides Enterprise Resource Planning hosted and managed services, was an $11 million company. Today, it's on its way to becoming a $50 million company.
As senior vice presidents of PeopleSoft and Oracle Fusion Services and PeopleSoft Managed Services, respectively, Stofka and Ledbetter are now part of the TITAN management team (with offices in Brentwood).
TITAN CEO Mike Vadini says TITAN is in the process of expanding the Nashville office—currently about 30 of TITAN's 350 employees work out of Nashville, and he expects to have about 50 here by the end of the year.
"Oasis Software was a unique company that focused on Central Tennessee for 10 years. When we acquired it, we were fascinated with the quality of people there, the client relationships and the clients themselves," Vadini says. "In addition, Tennessee is a market that has been extremely receptive to our company—we do a lot of business in Nashville, Knoxville and Memphis —so we're interested in building upon that success."
That's a ringing endorsement not only for Stofka and Ledbetter, but also for Nashville. And there's more.
"We view Nashville as one of about two or three up-and-coming cities with the ability to attract and keep talent," Vadini says. "The Tier Two cities of the South are great places for people to come and stay."
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