Geban:Dougluce

I'm not mature enough to be an effective father to my children, so I told them I'm their older brother.

I've directly founded or been in the founding partnership of several companies, starting with an ISP in 1991. That's no typo. We set up shop to sell Internet access to the populace directly long before nearly anyone knew it existed and indeed before it was really even called The Internet. My areas of interest include connectivity (hotspot wireless and wired), web-based services, cryptography, and P2P compensation models.

Over time, numerous investors have seen fit to cumulatively put over ten million into my hands to fund business ventures. I have yet to deliver a non-positive rate of return to any of these forward-thinking individuals. I attribute 10% of my success to meticulous research/planning/execution, and 90% to blind luck.

Any entrepreneur who claims that their success is due to a better percentage of non-luck is either hiding something or just plain deluding themselves.

I received a degree from Carnegie Mellon in Computer Science. While at CMU, I took an entrepreneurship class from Jack Roseman. My three-person student team launched our business during the class. Before the semester's end, we had booked about $1.2 million in orders. We cashed enough checks to fund operations and to hire high-end catering for the class final presentation. We were voted the "winning company" out of the 15-odd business plans presented the final day.

I knew long before the class final that a good route to people's adoration is through their stomachs.

I work in Seattle and live on Mercer Island. I do not need to take a ferry to work. I'm on a zillion boards and all that other uppity nonsense. My first real job was as a programmer (in Pascal). I still make the time to write software, either in support of business or because I Just Don't Have Enough Pain In My Life.

One of my early mentors (John Handley of OCLC) told me he worked as a temporarily-employed data entrist during college. I did the same thing through most of high school, resulting in a WPM rate of 130+ and making $2-4 more per hour than my burger-flipping contemporaries. I was president of my schools FBLA chapter, and competed nationally three times, placing top-ten twice.