The Data MogulsRich
Plante
He ran a NASDAQ company through its record years, then kept winning on every field he stepped on.
The boardroom
Rich Plante joined Encad Inc. in June 1995 as President and Chief Operating Officer, coming over from CalComp, where he was Vice President of Product Development. Encad, based in San Diego and traded on NASDAQ, was a leader in wide-format color inkjet printing for the graphic arts. With Rich in the president's chair, sales climbed from $65.5 million in 1995 to $107.4 million in 1996 and a record $149 million in 1997, when the company earned $17.4 million and employed 455 people. Encad signed OEM partnerships with Xerox and Kodak and launched its Digital Textile System, taking color printing into fashion and textiles. Rich was elected to the board in 1996.
The field
Before business, Rich was the athlete everyone wanted on their team. At Long Beach City College (1970–72) he was a basketball All-American, averaging 24.2 points a game, the Metro Conference MVP, and the state golfer of the year after leading LBCC to back-to-back state golf titles in 1971 and 1972. He went on to play basketball and baseball at Oregon State, where his senior team beat No. 1 UCLA in 1974. Then he became a legend of slow-pitch softball: 1,288 career home runs from 1976 to 1992, a spot on the ASA's 1980s Team of the Decade, and his own Louisville Slugger signature bat.
Today
Rich is a Hall of Champions inductee at Long Beach City College (2013) and a member of the Washington USSSA Slowpitch Hall of Fame (2014). He owns RP Ventures, lives in St. George, Utah, and still plays to win. He took silver in men's doubles pickleball at the 2021 Huntsman World Senior Games. Now he's Andrew's partner in Mogul Data, bringing public-company discipline to the business of valuing company data.
