How I Beat the Odds to Create a New Kind of Event Company

It’s never too late to win big. That’s the way Derek Gwaltney, 52, thinks about both life and his event company, Atlas Experiences.

- REBECCA DECZYNSKI

Derek Gwaltney Roswell, Georgia Three-year growth rate: 6,679%

A veteran of the Air Force, Gwaltney launched his company in 2019 to design once-in-a-lifetime getaways, primarily for state-operated lotteries looking to give customers more incentives to play. A scratch-off winner may not take home the top cash prize—but they could win a trip to a dreamy destination like a Hawaiian beachfront or a castle in Ireland. Atlas Experiences plans everything for these runner-up prizes, from private concerts to gourmet meals. The draw for Gwaltney is giving people lifelong memories. That passion has helped Atlas Experiences grow over 6,000 percent in three years, to $10.1 million in revenue last year.

After I served four years in the Air Force, stationed in California and South Korea, I got a job at a company called GTech, at the time the largest global gaming and lottery technology company. I went from being a security guard to a computer operator. I didn’t know anything about computers—I had only a high school diploma—but I was looking for a new challenge and showed initiative to ask about the position and the operations it supported. I saw an opportunity and I grabbed it. At 29, I became the youngest general manager at the company, and I started running a billion-dollar gaming operation. That was my launch pad. I can connect the dots pretty quickly and see the path.