This collection of cautionary tales from my career of being an entrepreneur centers around the travails of having big ideas and trying to make them happen ahead of their time. Excerpts of this work in progress follow.
IBM PC, Meeting the Mac (and Steve)
To say this was the earliest stages of PC is putting it lightly. This was green screen. Menu driven.
I started Software Dynamics, Inc. with a fraternity brother, Mike Nixon, developing custom software for the IBM PC. This was the earliest stages of bringing software to the desktop and SDI, as we were known, got our auspicious start developing accounting software for a customer that built burial vaults. READ MORE
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Designing at the intersection of fashion and technology
Designing at the intersection of fashion and technology
Gap had just reinvented cotton pants but I saw an opportunity with the performance qualities of synthetics. Particularly for sports.
After I left my first entrepreneurial venture, I was considering going to work for Apple but things weren’t going so well for them then. Not only did they have a hiring freeze, the Mac was ahead of its time and Steve had just been fired. I was 23 and thinking “ok, now what?” READ MORE