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Troy LeMaile-Stovall wanted to be a priest. He grew up Catholic in Houston, Texas—”an anomaly in and of itself,” he notes—and even spent five minutes in seminary before realizing his calling looked different than he’d imagined.
His mother gave him clarity: “You’re in this world for one reason and one reason only, to make a difference in one person’s life. The challenge is that you don’t know who that one person is or when they’ll come into your life. So you have to make a difference in everyone’s life.”
Today, as CEO of TEDCO, Maryland’s economic engine for technology companies, LeMaile-Stovall carries that mission forward, though he phrases it differently now: “My cup overflows. My job is to maximize my overflow to somebody else’s cup.”
That philosophy drives everything at TEDCO, from a $3 billion economic impact to 10,000 jobs created to a portfolio worth approximately $6 billion in unrealized value. However, LeMaile-Stovall argues that the entire economic development industry is measuring success incorrectly.
The Metrics That Don’t Work Anymore
Traditional economic development prioritizes job creation. Venture capital prioritizes revenue growth and net income, often resulting in a lean approach. TEDCO operates as both, creating inherent tension.
“I think we need better metrics,” he says. “Is capital flowing into the state that wouldn’t have come here otherwise? Are we retaining talent that would have left? Are we importing talent that wouldn’t have come? We’ve got to rethink the metrics that have been around since the 1950s.”
The fundamental issue? Our definition of work changed, but our measurements didn’t. Before COVID, everyone drove somewhere, worked in an office, and reversed the commute. All economic metrics assumed that behavior.
“That thing is not broken,” LeMaile-Stovall notes. “But our metrics are still trying to measure us based on behavior we’re no longer doing.”
The Innovation We Lost
LeMaile-Stovall believes that COVID created another casualty that nobody has properly measured: spontaneous innovation.
“You have a great idea, you walk down the hallway, we get on the whiteboard, we do our thing,” he says. “Now I’ve got to wait two to three weeks to get on your Zoom calendar. The spontaneity is gone.”
He calls it the velocity of innovation and argues that we’ve taken a significant hit that remains unmeasured. With only 10% of people in TEDCO’s office on any given day, those hallway collisions that spark breakthroughs simply don’t happen anymore.
Scaling Beyond State Lines
Entrepreneurs don’t see borders; they see opportunities. LeMaile-Stovall refers to this as “the circle problem.”
“Politicians operate in circles called cities, counties, states,” he explains. “I respect that. But COVID showed us something can happen in circle A and impact circles B and C. We don’t have to be in a place anymore.”
That reality shaped TEDCO’s international expansion strategy. Recent agreements with Taiwan, South Korea, and Jordan aren’t about outsourcing jobs; they’re about accelerating growth trajectories and opening markets that Maryland startups couldn’t access otherwise.
The Taiwan partnership involves a $50 million joint investment. The goal is to bring resources that accelerate entrepreneurial growth so dramatically that outside investors take notice of Maryland’s ecosystem and invest capital that wouldn’t have flowed here otherwise.
“If we can get just 5% of our portfolio companies growing faster than the national average, outside investors will ask what’s happening in Maryland,” LeMaile-Stovall says. “They’ll want to be part of it. And that capital will come not just to that 5%, they’ll think it’s happening with everybody.”
The Four S’s of Economic Development
LeMaile-Stovall uses four S’s to explain TEDCO’s strategy: scaling, stitching, storytelling, and stickiness.
Scaling means putting zeros behind initiatives; moving from $5 million efforts to $500 million efforts. Stitching means connecting Maryland’s assets collaboratively rather than having five groups work the same problem independently.
“The first rule of leadership is followership,” he notes. “We need one group working that problem and four of us following. That’s stitching. And that creates scale.”
Storytelling involves using data to communicate its impact clearly. Good storytelling attracts resources, which enable better scaling and stitching, creating a virtuous cycle.
But the entire point of scaling, stitching, and storytelling? Creating stickiness—keeping companies that started in Maryland in Maryland.
Doing Well While Doing Good
While less than 1% of venture capital nationally goes to people of color, women, and rural founders, TEDCO directs 50% of its investments—both in terms of dollars and deal volume—to these historically underinvested markets.
NASDAQ featured TEDCO under the marquee in Times Square last year, recognizing this leadership. Pitch Book named them one of the top venture capital firms by volume on the East Coast.
“You can do well and do good,” LeMaile-Stovall emphasizes.
TEDCO maintains resources across Maryland, including rural areas, Baltimore City, and Prince George’s County, supported by a $10 million federal grant that extends their reach into additional counties.
Maryland’s Spinach and Kryptonite
LeMaile-Stovall references Popeye the Sailor Man to explain Maryland’s paradox. Spinach gave Popeye strength. Kryptonite weakened Superman. Sometimes the same thing serves both functions.
“Our federal dependency and all these federal labs have been our spinach,” he explains. “When the country went through recessions, we stayed stable. But we’re discovering our spinach is also kryptonite.”
That realization drives the governor’s international strategy and TEDCO’s expansion beyond federal dependency. Maryland has extraordinary assets: more people with bachelor’s degrees and PhDs per capita than anywhere else in the country, more federal labs, and more federal research dollars through Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland than the top five states combined.
The soil is rich. However, relying solely on federal fertilizer creates vulnerability.
The Intersection Where Innovation Happens
LeMaile-Stovall gets most excited about sector intersections rather than individual sectors. Quantum, AI, and computational biology matter. But the intersection of cybersecurity and agriculture? That’s where opportunity hides.
“You ate breakfast this morning,” he says. “Ever think about where your food came from? What it takes to move something from farm to production to grocery store to your table? There’s a ton of value chains, and the whole system isn’t protected because it’s not integrated.”
He believes there should be a Secretary of Cyber Agriculture because protecting food supply chains represents both national security and a massive market opportunity, combining everything Maryland excels at: cyber, agriculture, quantum, AI, and life sciences.
The Journey Ahead
TEDCO is redesigning its approach through “My TEDCO”, a platform where entrepreneurs don’t choose programs. They apply once, are assigned a digital concierge who guides them to the services they need based on their growth stage, and then predictively directs them to future resources.
“The goal is to say if you come to us looking like this and follow these seven or eight touches, you have a 95% chance of success,” LeMaile-Stovall explains. “That’s the AI tool we’re building.”
Maryland is small; you only need a couple of Diet Cokes to drive across it, not the lunches and sleeping bag required for Texas. But it’s America in miniature: mountains, beaches, rivers, plains, extraordinary diversity. You can find your community here. You can also reach other major cities, such as Philadelphia, DC, Raleigh, or Boston, in just a few hours.
The Port of Baltimore is the westernmost East Coast port, a geographic advantage that reduces transportation miles to western markets. The assets exist. The question is whether Maryland can stitch them together, scale them properly, tell their story effectively, and create enough stickiness to keep what it grows.
LeMaile-Stovall’s cup overflows. His job is to maximize the overflow to everyone else’s cup. That’s not priestly work, exactly. But it’s close.