By Samantha Cart
Tech giants and West Virginia natives Brad Smith and John Chambers are using their experience and resources to create an entrepreneurial ecosystem and rebrand the Mountain State as a place where businesses are born.
In 2018, Brad Smith, chairman and CEO of Intuit at the time, announced a $25 million gift to the Marshall University Lewis College of Business. Within 24 hours of the announcement, West Virginia University (WVU) announced a gift of time, talent and resources by alumnus John Chambers, former executive chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems Inc. and founder and CEO of JC2 Ventures, to its college of business and economics. These investments led to the renaming of both business schools in their honor. More importantly, it sparked a conversation that is changing the face of the Mountain State’s industrial landscape.
“As soon as I saw the announcement, I picked up the phone, called John and said, ‘What do you say we work together and figure out how we’re complementary in this approach?’” Smith recalls. “John said he already had something in the works he wanted to tell me about, and we started to share ideas.”
Since that time, the friends and colleagues have worked together on their commitment to building West Virginia up as the startup state. With the added partnership of Marshall and WVU, the team is committed to teaching entrepreneurial skills and design thinking to all students at both universities, building incubators and attracting venture capital to the state.
“We’re starting to create a whole new gestalt that West Virginia can be the startup state,” says Smith. “We don’t need to bid for a company to come in and build their headquarters here—we can build the jobs ourselves.”
Creating Prosperity in the Mountain State
Smith’s journey with Marshall University started in childhood. Growing up in Kenova, WV, he was 6 years old when he watched the mountain burn after the 1970 plane crash that killed 75 athletes, coaches, flight crew members and fans.
“I saw this tragedy and how it impacted an entire community,” he says. “Then I saw that community rise from the ashes. I saw the university ask, ‘How are we going to make a better tomorrow?’ From there, my brothers and I had the pleasure of being the first in our family to go to college, and we all graduated from Marshall. Anything I’ve ever been able to achieve in my life is because Marshall University and Kenova were the houses that built me.”
While Smith, who stepped down as CEO of Intuit last year and now serves as executive chairman of the company’s board of directors, has lived and worked in Silicon Valley for many years, he has carried West Virginia and Marshall University in his heart. He and his wife, Alys, have funded hundreds of scholarships for Marshall students who are the first in their family to attend college. Smith also started a Shark Tank-style contest at Marshall in 2016, where he served as a judge alongside Jennifer Garner and Chad Pennington. He saw his 2018 gift to the university’s business school as an opportunity to give more than money but to give hope and support to the next generation, and he is excited about the possibilities it represents.
“My ties to Marshall are—I’ll borrow from Tim McGraw—humble and kind,” he says. “When you get where you’re going, don’t forget to turn back around and help the next one in line. That is why I am so passionate about Marshall. We are bringing Silicon Valley techniques to Marshall and teaching how to have an experimentation entrepreneurial mindset by taking those techniques and embedding them into the curriculum. They blessed us by choosing to rename the school for me, but I’m most excited by the fact that they’re teaching the world that all creation doesn’t happen in New York, Massachusetts or California. It can happen right here in West Virginia.”
Smith is also involved in another project to create a more prosperous Mountain State—the Intuit Prosperity Hub Program—which was launched to generate economic prosperity for people living in distressed cities by creating new jobs, preparing people for jobs of the future and equipping entrepreneurs to start successful businesses. It began with two pilot sites in 2016—Wise, VA, and Johnston, PA—and its $60 million investment in those communities has created 1,150 jobs and more than $32 million in wages and benefits. Hub sites are chosen based on three criteria: the opportunity for Intuit to have a strong business impact, a strong community impact and strong community support.
“We want to go into communities where people think their best days were yesterday and show them there is a better tomorrow,” says Smith. “Talent is evenly distributed around the world but, unfortunately, economic opportunity and jobs are not. In fact, one out of every six Americans lives in a distressed community, where the manufacturing base or extraction economy has started to fade into a less-than-relevant technology. We wanted to create job opportunities in these communities and at the same time create great business outcomes for Intuit. The Prosperity Hub Program is a socially responsible sourcing program that creates careers and career development opportunities while also producing great business results for Intuit and the customers we serve.”
Last March, Intuit announced a Prosperity Hub would be established in Bluefield, WV, and it was officially launched on September 23, 2019. It includes a customer success center and innovation lab. Its goal is to bring full-time jobs, improve access to vocational training and expand the expertise of the community. As of August 2020, the hub had 150 full-time employees who were trained and working to help online customers with Intuit’s Mint and QuickBooks products. According to Smith, the hub will have 250 full-time employees by the end of 2020, and more will be added in 2021.
After stepping down as CEO of Intuit, Smith increased the amount of time he was spending in West Virginia, and he is excited for the adventures and opportunities ahead.
“The future is here, and we have to lean in as a state, teach 21st century skills and make the assets and tools available to our people,” he says.
Teaching West Virginia to Dream
Growing up in the chemical valley of Charleston, WV, Chambers learned from his parents, both doctors and graduates of WVU, the benefits of forethought. They taught their son not to look one or two years down the road but instead to look 10 or 15 years into the future. With a background in technologies that disrupted entire industries, today Chambers lives by the mantra disrupt or be disrupted.
“I have learned you disrupt or you are going to get disrupted, you grow or you die, and you have to have the courage to change,” says Chambers. “I have also learned that the pain of not changing is much worse than the pain of changing. It took a while, but I am very comfortable with disruption now, and I focus on it.”
As CEO of Cisco, Chambers led the acquisition of 180 companies, and, as executive chairman of the board of directors, he counseled the leadership team on strategy and digital transformation. He also spearheaded the company’s country digitization program, which helps government leaders across the world use technology to create economic opportunities.
“At Cisco, it was an honor to change the world,” he says. “We changed the internet, and we changed the way the world works, lives, learns and plays at the most valuable company of all time. Today, I have three goals in my life: to really make a difference one more time, to live life to the fullest and to give back. I have always believed if you are fortunate enough to be a little bit more successful, you owe an obligation to help your peers, so that is what I am doing with my life.”
Chambers is achieving those goals and putting his West Virginia values into practice in the state he loves. His unique 2018 gift to WVU wasn’t just financial. He promised intellectual resources in the form of his time and talent to support the John Chambers College of Business and Economics’ new startup engine, create philanthropic venture capital funds to back the startups created by the engine and create a Center for Artificial Intelligence (AI) Management to explore AI opportunities in West Virginia.
As someone who has watched and studied market transitions for more than 50 years, Chambers’ time and talent are a valuable gift. Under his leadership, Cisco went from $70 million in annual revenue to $47 billion, and 10,000 employees became millionaires.
“I love setting goals that many people consider unattainable, and I love teaching people how to dream,” he says. “What I am trying to do now in West Virginia is bring all of that together.”
Like Smith, Chambers wants to reinvent education for the digital era by introducing entrepreneurship into every facet and supporting business development, innovation and investment. Chambers is currently volunteering 5% of his time to providing expertise to WVU leaders like President Gordon Gee and Javier Reyes, Milan Puskar Dean of the business school, while also mentoring the students, faculty, staff and community members who are utilizing the school’s startup engine. He also gives financially to existing venture capital funds while helping create new ones to fund the fledgling businesses.
“I love to build teams, and I am competitive to a fault,” he says. “I do billion-dollar acquisitions on a handshake, and that is really the currency I hopefully bring to this project. I am not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. I have made a lot of mistakes. I would argue you are more of a product of your mistakes than your successes. I will do whatever it takes to make this work. I love the work, and I love the people of West Virginia.”
Chambers believes the state’s strengths for diversifying its economic landscape lie in its natural resources.
“Where does West Virginia go as we become a startup state?” he says. “We can be the leader in fast-water activity because we have so much fast-water access. We can be the leader in remote work where employees can be close to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York or Washington, D.C., but live in an environment like Canaan Valley or Morgantown. We can be a leader in outdoor mountain biking, trails or hiking. We can create startups in each of these areas.”
Above all else, Chambers wants the people of West Virginia to feel free to dream of what could be without constraint or doubt—to dream of new business models, new technologies, new ways of living and new industries.
“While there is no sure thing in life, look at how far we have come and how far we have the potential to go,” he says. “Perhaps with the Mountaineer spirit, we will come together with the common goal of change. If we don’t, the outcome is unacceptable, and every West Virginian knows that. Could we fail? Of course. Are we going to fail? I don’t think so.”
