Six months after $300M exit, Global Data Consortium co-founder Bill Spruill unveils ‘family’ venture

RALEIGH — The ink has barely dried on Global Data Consortium’s (GDC) $300 million exit to UK-based London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), but its co-founder Bill Spruill is already plugging his next venture: a “family business” called 2ndF.

Six months after handing over the reins to his global identification verification platform, the long-time Raleigh entrepreneur is setting up an enterprise aimed at driving “inclusive” growth in the Triangle’s tech ecosystem.

Equal parts angel investing, community outreach and education, he says he’s excited about this next phase. He also has some lofty goals: “national dominance by 2033.”

“I call it the ‘House of Good Deeds,”’ said Spruill, who’s in the midst of renovating an office for his team of four to be headquartered at the Smoky Hollow complex in downtown Raleigh. It’s set to be open this spring.

“It’s very much a family office with family money backing it up,” he said. “We have no LPs; no one else to answer to, except for the work we’re doing in our own community.”

A deeper look inside 2ndF: Bill Spruill’s vehicle he says can help Triangle tech ecosystem achieve its ‘destiny’

In addition to 2ndF, Spruill was recently named the board chair for the Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED) through 2024. He expects its overlapping mission with 2ndF will translate into future collaborations.

“We’ve got a lot of active founders doing different things, but I’d argue we don’t have proactive exited founders who have made it their sole mission to lift up the Triangle,” Spruill said. “I’ve decided that is my mission.

2ndF founder and co-founder of Global Data Consortium, Bill Spruill.

Homegrown talent

Spruill is one of the Triangle’s biggest success stories in recent years. GDC’s exit is considered among the largest private deals to come out of the region — on par with exits of fellow homegrown North Carolina startups Bronto and PrecisionLender. (Bronto sold to NetSuite for $200 million in 2015; PrecisionLender got acquired by Q2 Holdings for $510 million in 2019.)

It’s also a standout because Spruill is African American. Unable to get early-stage funding, he and his co-founder Charles Gaddy bootstrapped the company until 2020 when he raised $5.5 million from LSEG. Two years later, it bought the company with cash.

Historically, Black founders have faced disproportionate struggles getting their businesses off the ground. Nationally, startups with at least one Black founder have received 1.9% of deal counts and 1.2% of overall venture dollars invested so far this year, Crunchbase data shows.

The Triangle mirrors this trend. Black-led startups accounted for four – or roughly 1.6% — of the total 251 “growth-stage” startups in the Triangle for 2021 based on recent data compiled by Triangle serial entrepreneur Scot Wingo and his annual Triangle Tweener List. Compare that to the fact that Blacks make up 21% percent of North Carolina’s population.

Women-led startups fared slightly better with 18 startups, or 7.1%. Latino founders accounted for three, or 1.1%.

Meanwhile, some experts say those numbers could actually be much higher. Omissions from the Tweeners’ list include Donald Thompson’s Raleigh-based The Diversity Movement, which recently raised close to $1 million, and Cary-based edtech startup CircleIn founded by Gerald Meggett Jr.

Either way, Spruill said much work still needs to be done to get those numbers closer to parity.

“[This] community is very important to me,” he said. “It helped me get to this magical outcome. I want to help all founders, not just people of color, achieve that same type of outcome.”

Council for Entrepreneurial Development names William Spruill as board chair

Multi-pronged approach

2ndF is short for “Second Foundation,” the third novel published of the Foundation Series by American writer Isaac Asimov. In this universe, its namesake group’s mission is to ensure their leader’s plan stays the course.

“To some degree, that’s what we represent,” Spruill said. “As an organization, we’re here to help the Triangle ecosystem achieve its destiny.”

His approach has several prongs. The first component is angel investing, or “capital formation.” Largely employing his own funds, he plans to disperse capital to promising early-stage startups, many of whom are led by minority founders.

He also hopes to recruit other angel investors, including what he calls the “GDC Mafia,” the 25 current and past employees of the company who became newly minted millionaires through the deal.

To date, he’s written checks totaling more than $600,000, he said. Among early recipients: ten local founders who received an all-expense-paid trip to attend the Business of Software conference in Boston in September. Black Dollar Corp., a Black-owned business directory and retail shop led by Johnny Hackett, landed $100,000 to pay for salaries for three employees at its flagship site, The Factory, through 2023.

On the non-profit side, Spruill is working closely with organizations like CED, where he’s board chairman; Triangle Family Services; and NC State University, to provide resources on the ground. He’s also promoting minority education at institutions like the Durham Nativity School and The Daniel Center for Math and Science.

“We’ve lost a lot of traction over years for a variety of reasons, both macro and micro,” he said. “I’m keen on returning us to be one of the most dominant entrepreneurial ecosystems in the country.”