I’m a tech guy. It’s in my blood.
My father introduced personal computing to his workplace back in 1986.
This workplace, mind you, was a farming & cattle ranching operation in the middle of nowhere. (Nearest to Fresno, in California’s Central Valley).
They were already a technically progressive place, as 1980’s agriculture operations went – they had a mainframe computer in the farm office!
The winds of change were blowing though, and my dad, a freshly-minted MBA & Stanford grad, put IBM PCs on his coworkers desks (much to the chagrin of the guys operating the mainframe). Bringing “power to the people” (as he put it) was a solid hit.
He only told me this story about a thousand times over the course of my childhood. It was a point of pride for him, & one of the few tales I didn’t mind hearing again & again.
His endless stories about tech & business kindled a fire in my heart – not just interest in technology but a strong desire to achieve, to enable people, to do things well.
Is it really any wonder that 30-some years later, his son started building a dairy management software startup?
I didn’t get very far on that attempt. My limited technical expertise & lack of business knowledge at the time destined it for failure, but the fire was there.
It’s still there.
It’s been there for 20+ years.
It’s what lead me to study hard & become a great engineer.
It’s what kept me moving forward when my computer died with a month of work not backed up.
It’s what got me into the world of NYC finance with no college degree & no connections.
It’s what will help me make my mark on tech, finance, and the world writ large.
Special thanks to Moses Kagan, whose first blog post I aped a bit while writing my own.
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