Bradley Krause, a founding partner of Kinko’s who helped expand a single printing shop near the University of California, Santa Barbara into a business empire, died January 24 of cancer at Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport. He was 58.

Kinko’s founder Paul Orfalea discovered his first partner — then a hippie surfer with long hair and a beard — when he went to a graphic arts and photography class at Santa Barbara City College looking for a pressman.

Within weeks, Mr. Orphala and Krause were partners in the printing business. They later left printing behind as they established copy shops near other colleges. Krause took the business up the Pacific coast and became president of the company’s Northwest division.

Krause eventually owned and managed partnership stakes in more than 100 stores, becoming one of four early partners who were “huge entrepreneurs in their own right,” Orfalea wrote in his 2005 book about Kinko’s, “Copy This!”

The company grew in the 1980s as it turned into the back office for small businesses and entrepreneurs — a trend fueled by the rise of the personal computers and downsizing by big companies.

By the time Krause left the office supply and print services company, it had more than 1,000 locations and 25,000 employees. FedEx bought Kinko’s for $2.4 billion in 2003.

Bradley William Krause was born July 24, 1948, in Burbank, Calif. His father, Maxwell, was a projectionist at Paramount Studios.

At 8, Krause was a dedicated surfer, a passion that would be rivaled by other outdoor pursuits.

After leaving Kinko’s in 1999, he invested in real estate and spent his days windsurfing or racing cars.

In 2004, he and his wife moved from Santa Barbara to Long Island, where they bought a home built in 1896 by Stuie Krause’s great-grandfather and began restoring it.