Mind matters.

• Author: Kemp, Mark

Tim Parsons and Jeff Deming had just finished playing tennis at River Run Country Club in Davidson when they started talking business. Their sons were high-school buddies, and while the men had spent time together, they usually chatted about family or other domestic topics. "We were probably having a beer on the veranda when I asked Tim what he did," says Deming, who in 2007 was senior vice president of product development for an office supply and technology business. It turned out both were in the same industry: business-software development. "Tim told me about the company, and I thought, 'That sounds interesting.'"

Six years later, they sit in a conference room at the Davidson headquarters of Impact Financial Systems Inc., which provides automation software for financial institutions. They moved into the 3,500-square-foot office the previous day, and it's just an elevator ride from the 2,000-square-foot space the company outgrew. But the upgrade is significant. With annual revenue growth averaging 43% since 2009, IFS has invested in more senior- and entry-level talent. It's paying off. Last year, IFS landed its first large enterprise client--information-technology speak for providing an application used companywide rather than departmentally. (IFS can't release who it is.) Based on that success, it's targeting other large brokerages.

"We don't have a lot of machines other than PCs," Deming says. "We don't have big shipping costs, because the cost of shipping--I mean, it's just digital. What we do have and what we must have are great minds, and that begins with Tim. For him to have taken himself out of the market back in 2002, his biggest investment was to not be working somewhere else, because he could command a large salary." Born and raised in Southern California, Parsons graduated from Bucknell University in Pennsylvania with a computer-science degree in 1986. He developed software for Lehman Brothers before moving to Charlotte in 1992 to run technology for Inter-state/Johnson Lane Inc., which was acquired by Wachovia Corp. in 1999. He became chief information officer of Winston-Salem-based Wachovia Securities Inc., where experience with inefficient automation systems got him thinking about creating a better one.

When Wachovia merged with Charlotte-based First Union Corp. in 2001, Parsons lost his job and sank $15,000 of his severance into pursuing his idea. "I said, 'I'm going to give myself six months, and if I can make it work...