Warehouse center for innovators

GREENVILLE -- Software entrepreneur Peter Waldschmidt plans to create up to 10 new ventures over the next five years, and put Greenville on the map in the software world along the way.

He's one of the new tenants at the Next Innovation Center, a former warehouse turned into trendy office space at the intersection of Church Street and University Ridge downtown.

Most of the companies that have leased space in the building, or plan to, are members of the Greenville Chamber of Commerce's Next group for technology entrepreneurs. They have long wanted to share office space under the theory it would foster collaboration and creativity.

Developer Bob Hughes of Greenville designed the Next Innovation Center with the techie crowd in mind. Amenities include skylights over stained concrete floors, a center atrium with grand staircase, Wii rooms for relaxation, a 50-megabit Internet pipe and digital signage in the lobby that tenants can program.

The $13 million complex will also include 28 condominium units when it's finished, Hughes said. His financing for the project included $8 million at below-market rates available through a program designed to spur economic development in blighted areas.

NWN, a Massachusetts company that just bought Tiba Solutions of Greenville, has leased the most space, 10,000 square feet, said Ken Brower, vice president of application development.

The Next program and the Upstate Carolina Angel Network investor group have small offices at the center, and the Clemson University Research Foundation will use it to showcase technologies available for licensing.

Waldschmidt, 33, helped found TetraData Corp., a Greenville software startup that raised $4.3 million in venture capital before it was sold to Follett Corp. of Illinois for an undisclosed sum. He left TetraData shortly after the 2006 sale and founded Gnoso Inc., a holding company for what he hopes will be an entire group of software ventures.

So far, the 15-employee Gnoso has launched two subsidiaries: Log for Life LLC, which helps diabetes patients track blood sugar levels and other factors crucial to their health; and NCover LLC, a quality-control tool for software developers.

Waldschmidt said NCover has attracted numerous large corporations as customers since he released it over the Internet six years ago.

It's the leading "code coverage" tool for .net developers, he said, used by more than 100,000 parties in 170 countries. Customers paying $199 a year per user include Citrix, Microsoft, Oracle, Google, Halliburton, Siemens and General Electric, he said.

Going forward, Waldschmidt plans to launch one or two new software programs a year. Most of them will be online applications with a subscription fee.

He sees no reason why Greenville can't eventually be as well-known to software entrepreneurs as Austin, Texas, or Boulder, Colo. Like those cities, Waldschmidt said, Greenville has a high quality of life and lots of creative people.

"Word will get out that there's interesting things going on in Greenville," he said.