Surfing CEO

All Tom Frost wanted was a job as a dishwasher. The 21-year-old from Long Island was living an endless summer in Hawaii in 1999, sleeping on friends’ couches and earning just enough money to surf every day.

So he applied at Roy’s Hawaiian Fusion restaurant in Honolulu to make a little more pocket change—a smart choice, as it turns out. Roy’s hadn’t yet expanded into the 32-restaurant empire it is now, but it was still legendary in the island chain as a destination for high-end, neighborhood dining pioneered by one of Hawaii’s most acclaimed chefs. As it turned out, the dishwasher position was filled, so Frost didn’t get the job. Instead, he launched a career.

Frost happened to notice that chef/owner Roy Yamaguchi was having trouble with a new BlackBerry. Adept with technology, Frost fixed it on the spot. A few weeks later, he was called back in to fix Roy’s point-of-sale system, the restaurant’s computer system that records food and beverage orders and prints a bill. Then staff asked Frost to come in and fix a computer issue, solve network trouble and even develop and install new software to help manage inventory and customer head counts. Eventually, Roy’s started paying him. Frost was soon hired to manage all of the restaurant’s data systems, computers and networks. Frost thought if he could do this for other businesses, maybe he could make enough money in a few years to quit and surf full time.

“Of course, that never works out,” Frost says.

A decade later, Frost has headquartered his company, Datum Corporation, in Lakewood Ranch and shows no signs of slowing down. He projects $26 million in revenue this year, thanks to contracts with dozens of successful restaurants in Sarasota and many of the chains based in Florida, along with other businesses.