Modesto-born tech company keeps growing, acquires Ohio firm as part of national push
Modesto’s homegrown tech company Datapath just keeps growing despite the difficulties of the pandemic.
In late 2020, the IT solutions and network security firm moved from its McHenry Avenue office to a new, larger, high-profile headquarters on J Street downtown. Now the company has acquired another, smaller tech firm and is strengthening its focus on working with school systems.
Co-founders and Modesto natives David Darmstandler and James Bates recently purchased MobileTek, a Columbus, Ohio-based company that works with K-12 public school systems. The company, which will take the Datapath name, has about 30 employees who will continue to work in Ohio and remotely connect with the Modesto home base.
The acquisition makes Datapath, founded in Modesto in 2005, one of the largest network/IT companies in the West that specializes in working with school districts, Darmstandler said. It has some 85 employees.
Bates said the interest in MobileTek came from the company’s experience working with schools, particularly its professional development offerings. Those include instructional online videos and other services that educational clients can use in and out of the classroom.
“That’s something we were interested in but didn’t have expertise in,” Bates said. “Schools across the nation are spending billions of dollars in tech. We want to see that tech provide a new return on investment.”
This is Datapath’s third business acquisition in four years. The first was a Fresno company in 2018, followed by an Orange County firm in 2020. The company has about 40 employees at its downtown Modesto headquarters, in the longtime former Warden’s Office Supply space, with the rest working at their satellite locations.
Both founders said the headquarters will grow and build on their pledge to continue adding higher-paying tech jobs in the Central Valley. The company currently works with about 70 to 80 school districts across California, Ohio, Georgia and Florida.
“This is our home and our roots, we want to grow here,” Darmstandler said. “There’s been pretty astronomical, substantial growth with this field. We are adding school districts every month. Especially through COVID, the learning experience had to change and they’re leaning on technology more than before.”
The company’s ultimate objective is to take its services more broadly nationwide. Currently, companies that service schools are scattered across the country in smaller shops. Darmstandler and Bates estimate that to centralize their services more widely, they’d need to grow to about 200 to 300 employees overall.
The partners also have a goal of about one new acquisition a year, so keep your eyes out for more tech news coming from J Street.
“We want to show (a company with) deep foundational roots in the Central Valley can do things at the same level and scale as any other big city,” Bates said. “And we’ve tried to showcase that with our new office. So many people come in and say, ‘We’d expect to see this in L.A. or San Francisco.’ Our question is why not here. Tech isn’t different, human brains are not different.”
