BiblioLabs, a Charleston-based global leader in digital content distribution, is a big believer in the College of Charleston education. In fact, alumni founded the company and four of the seven newest hires are graduates, a ratio pretty consistent within the entire company.
Mitchell Davis ’93, Jason Youmans ’00, and Bob Holt ’81 founded the company with Andrew Roskill in 2006. The company became profitable three years later and has averaged more than 200% annual sales growth.
“We have built an exceptional, fast moving, smart team and feel very good about the future,” Davis, BiblioLabs chief business officer says. “We have a robust partnership with the computer science department at the College of Charleston and have been able to get several software engineers from there. In our other positions, really don’t let that be a driver, job applicants from the College are so strong, it just sort of works out that we hire a large percentage.”
In their recent round of hiring, just one alumnus comes from a software engineering background. Michael Atwood Jr. is a Charleston native who will be a senior software engineer. Two College of Charleston alumni will be associate curators. Lauren Hummer earned her B.A. in Historic Preservation and Community Planning and Maggie McMenamin earned her B.A. and M.A. in English at the College. Jessica Ellis Duggan who graduated with two B.A. degrees (English and Media Communication) will work in research, print and digital produces.
Prior to starting BiblioLabs, the team of entrepreneurs developed BookSurge, a print on demand software and services company that was acquired by Amazon.com in 2005. BiblioLabs began as a global print-on-demand publisher.
“Now, we have built a revenue stream from that base and are making a transition to digital in a way that really goes beyond just books to a broader range of artifacts, stories and knowledge that we can bring to life digitally,” says Davis. “We hope the new additions to the BiblioLabs team bring a wealth of experience in historical research, humanities publishing and using cloud based technology to scale effective business and content delivery processes.”
