We recently connected with Daniel Patton and have shared our conversation below.

Daniel, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.

Worked at Deloitte Digital Studio for 4 years, left in 2018 to move to Argentina and start what is today Rothbright. Deloitte was a fantastic learning environment, but after 4 years, I had to make a decision about whether to build a corporate career or to risk it all and build a company on my terms. The ensuing seven years have been a great journey, starting a company with exceptional individuals and together building a portfolio of nine businesses and 45+ customers.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I was born and raised in Eugene Oregon, and grew up in the track and field community, and was an All American in Junior Olympics. My father was an academic (math/physics) and an innovator at Hewlett Packard, and my mom worked at the University of Oregon School of Law as a law professor. I was exposed to technology early and developed my first website in 3rd grade, and won a National Science Foundation award. I think it was a tour of a pyramid brought to the screen. My dad worked in Singapore for a number of years when I was young, so we ended up traveling quite a bit to Southeast Asia and other countries in Europe and South America.

I sold and developed my first commercial website to a middle school teachers husband who owned a wallpaper business, Wallpaper Plus. I high school, I spent most of my time focused on school and sports, so I didn’t spend much time at the computer. In college, I realized I could make extra money building websites, which then turned in a first startup at 20 years old. I majored in History and Math at University of Oregon, and then went back to study Software Engineering at Oregon State University. I dropped out of that program to work on building web technology in a series of failed startups.

When I was 25 I moved to Kansas City, Missouri to live with my now wife, who was doing Teach for America. I ended up becoming a developed at VML, a major advertising agency and worked on accounts like Ford North America and Colgate Palmolive. From there I was recruited by Deloitte Digital Studio, a fast growing division of Deloitte. At Deloitte I worked as a front-end developer, and then ended up working on special projects. I worked on government, hospitality, and insurance projects primarily, with a few special internal projects.

I left Deloitte in 2018 to move to Argentina, taking a risk to build a new type of company, one that was globally distributed and served the quickly expanding digital services space. The idea of the company was to make it possible to get digital work (website, software, SEO, ads, etc.) done anywhere by experts in a systematic way. We built a global network of talent and sought to be a fairly-priced leader. Today we have grown our global delivery network and our onshore team. We’ve used this approach to own equity in businesses in different industries which simultaneously drive revenue for Rothbright.

I’m most proud of bringing high quality people together behind a common goal.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

In a previous business, my partner abandoned the business during a critical capital raise. He then threatened to kill me and my family, and ended up taking his own life.

This was a devastating event for me, the other owners of the business, and my family. All in all it was a tragedy.

From that event, I built what is Rothbright today.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

Our business has never raised outside capital. The business was funded via selling recurring contracts, and an initial large software development contract.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://rothbright.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rothbright
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rothbright