Benefitfocus President/CEO tells tales of founding and flourishing

The Daniel Island Speaker Series has not failed in bringing forward fascinating subjects, from a storm tracker to a jet maker to a war hero. And the Series’ most recent guest, a rather revolutionary entrepreneur, upheld the trend.
On Wednesday, April 23, Daniel Island Business Association president Pete Harper introduced Shawn Jenkins, President and CEO of Benefitfocus, the Daniel Island-based industry leader in web-based employee benefits. Harper not only cited Benefitfocus as tracking to become the seventh largest private employer in Charleston after its upcoming expansion, but also heralded the company’s workplace as being “a pretty cool environment.” After noting Jenkins’ service on several community boards – the University of South Carolina Foundation Board of Directors, College of Charleston Board of Governors, and Charleston Southern University Board of Visitors – he thanked Jenkins’ wife, Jocelyn, and son, Alex, for being in attendance, and welcomed Jenkins to the podium.
The keynote speaker opened with a shout-out to the host venue and Speakers Series sponsor, the Daniel Island Club. Jenkins shared that when he founded Benefitfocus with friend and colleague Mason Holland in 2000, the Club and the Daniel Island Company were among the first customers of the start-up. “Mason was one of the first Club members, and knew this place would be very special,” he noted. Jenkins lives in Mount Pleasant, but his family has since joined the DI Club and, between work and play, spends significant time here in Daniel Island.
Offering a colorful flashback on his enterprise, Jenkins shared that he served as Vice President of Holland’s small business, American Pensions, back in the 1990s. Piggly Wiggly was their largest customer. In 1997, as Jenkins and Holland were working with a client’s retirement plan, they crafted the idea of taking employer-provided benefits and placing them online. “It took several years to incubate the idea,” Jenkins recalled, “and this was well before the whole Silicon Harbor thing.”
They set up shop in what was the old Walmart space on Johnnie Dodds Boulevard in Mount Pleasant. The dot-com bubble burst in March 2000; Benefitfocus was launched that June. “Our timing was a little awkward,” Jenkins admitted. “And our original logo had a big eyeball – you know, as in ‘focus.’ People would see our giant billboard and come in looking for an eyeglass place.”
Unable to secure investors early on, the duo developed the concept and software on their own. Things took an auspicious turn when Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina, which Jenkins calls an “early visionary,” selected Benefitfocus to create its online benefits portal. In fairly short order, Blue Cross Blue Shield in other states followed suit. “We quietly built an elegant ‘it works’ technology for sizeable companies, with a focus on the private sector,” Jenkins stated, “and we became profitable in our second year.”
When the founders could no longer deny their draw to Daniel Island, the City of Charleston helped them locate a sizeable property on Fairchild Street, and they cut the ribbon on the new facility at the end of 2006. “I was terrified about buying that much land,” Jenkins remembers. But he recognized that there is a strong perceived value in well-placed bricks and mortar. “We were changing things before, but there’s something about real estate that gets attention,” he suggested. “Now we use it to our advantage.”
Benefitfocus’ initial public offering took place in September 2013, timing that was perhaps more serendipitous, considering the activity in the U.S. government with regard to health care. Today, with 393 large employer customers (those with 1,000 or more employees) and a platform tailor-made for insurance companies, Benefitfocus is the biggest player in the field. “It’s been fun to found the company, and it’s been fun to grow the company,” Jenkins beamed.
This growth will become even more conspicuous with the organization’s expansion, currently underway adjacent to its existing Daniel Island headquarters. Benefitfocus will add 1,200 new employees and 310,000 square feet of space, including a university/training facility, software engineering center, and a restaurant/community center. The latter will be “part café, part meeting space,” and will be made available for community use as well.
But for all the remarkable growth, it is his enterprise’s culture of which Jenkins may be most proud. The company has established four core values (see sidebar), and its leaders are intentionally open to adding more as the company evolves. They host meetings with culture sessions not only in Daniel Island, but in Benefitfocus’ other domestic locations (Greenville, Tulsa, and San Francisco), as well as India. The company hired 400 people globally in the last twelve months, but regardless of the locale, all are indoctrinated in the same culture, with those four core values providing the cohesive basis. The core values, along with the “unique things” about the way Benefitfocus conducts business (e.g. Bring Your Dog to Work Day), have even made it to hardcover print in the company’s publication, “Winning with Culture.”
Though it may not get the same ink, responsibility to the community is an evident aim at Benefitfocus as well. The company has sponsored the Daniel Island Rotary Club Duck Race for a number of years, and Jenkins says he hopes Benefitfocus continues to play a “growing, meaningful role” on the island and in greater Charleston. Working with local high schools, College of Charleston, and Clemson University to foster computer science and data science education, Jenkins suggests that the offering of a graduate/doctorate level degree in these fields could be Benefitfocus’ biggest impact to date.
“We’re trying to be really good stewards,” he related, then confessed his company’s decidedly Daniel Island commerce-focused impact: “We buy a lot here on the island. Well, we eat a lot.”
The Daniel Island Speakers Series is put on by the collective efforts of the Daniel Island Club, the Daniel Island Community Association, the Daniel Island Business Association, and the Rotary Club of Daniel Island. After a summer hiatus, the Series will resume on September 10 with guest speaker Frank Abagnale, DI resident and subject of the film “Catch Me If You Can.”