
He set out to write a novel, learned to sell software, then built Tropic to help the people buying it. Now David Campbell has handed the CEO job to his co-founder and taken a different seat at the table.

At Tropic, Justin Etkin turned an operator’s frustration with software buying into a business built on shared intelligence. His route to the CEO’s chair runs through vendor contracts, a summer selling knives, and an office that needed painting.