I am a man of many facets who is inspired and gratified by finding solutions to high-stakes problems.
In my 20s, I founded Austin-based Mutual Mobile, an emerging technologies company specializing in visual design software and digital systems for real-world needs.
For the past nine years, my company and I have been working to provide benefits in diverse arenas including health, finance, education, and transportation.
College Years and Education
While a student at The University of Texas at Austin, I took what I refer to as “a buffet of courses,” switching my major many times—from economics to advertising, getting some computer science and sociology in the process, and finally leaving one course shy of a sociology degree.
“I’m pretty sure my parents think I graduated, so … we won’t tell them,” I confess with a grin. In college, my interests were broad but as-yet undefined. Joining the UT aviation community, I discovered a passion for flying and earned my pilot’s license as a freshman. It was also there that I met the four friends who would become co-founders of Mutual Mobile.
Early Business Ventures
“As early as I can remember I had this entrepreneurial streak. It probably drove my parents crazy,” I muse.
I was that kid going door to door selling different knickknacks and, in Austin’s hot summers, lemonade on the street corner. In the winter, the lemonade stand morphed into a hot chocolate stand.
By my preteen years, I was experimenting with programming, which began paving the way to my future career path.
The iPhone Catalyst
And then, in 2007, a pivotal thing happened: I sat in a dorm room and watched a recorded video of Steve Jobs announcing the iPhone. I recall, “A lot of people at that time realized this was going to be a significant device.
I think what made me and my co-founders really stand up and take notice is that we saw it as this inflection point, as significant as the internet or the wheel; that the world was going to be different afterwards. … That was really the catalyst.” I wanted to participate in fostering and accelerating the change.
“We didn’t know what we didn’t know at the time. We just knew that this was going to be incredible. We want it to be a part of it.”
For more about me and what I’m up to, see a few of my articles here.