Small Biz

Accidental Entrepreneurs

Scott Gaidano (pictured) and Jay Hagan

DriveSavers, Novato, Calif.
Founded: 1985
Employees: 90
Revenue: $20 million (2007)

Scott Gaidano and Jay Hagan found themselves out of work in the mid-1980s when the hard drive company they worked for went bankrupt. They were exploring a mail-order crab bake business when former customers started calling, looking to recover data from damaged hard drives. "There was no book, no manual. Nobody knew how to do it," Gaidano says. As word spread from former customers to anyone with a fried hard disk, the pair moved from working out of Gaidano's home to running a $20 million data recovery company—all because their employer went out of business.