I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and never strayed far from my California roots. I grew up in Los Altos, attended Chico State (and eventually pursued post-grad work at Stanford and UCLA), and returned to the Bay Area to start my career. I always knew I would start my own business. In fact, the writing was on the wall when I got called into the principal’s office in fourth grade for renting my comic books to my classmates. A few years later, I made a name for myself by running one of the largest firework operations in Los Altos.  

Ultimately technology called to me. There were two defining moments that shaped my future career in tech. The first was getting an Apple IIe computer.  As a kid growing up in Silicon Valley, this computer put me on the cusp of what was happening. Oddly enough, Steve Jobs’ house was part of my paper route. His family didn't tip very well. The second major happening was the commercialization of the Internet. This lead me to start developing marketing and technology solutions for a consulting company I started called Panic Publishing. In the early days of the Internet I had a number of high profile customers, including Netscape, Yahoo!, 3M, Bay Networks, SGI, and more.