For those of you who do not know me, I am a high-tech software executive from the Boston area. I've had one job my entire career: building software. As part of that job, I have played many roles: software engineer, development lead, architect, development manager and VP of engineering. All my companies have been startups, three were acquired, and for the first time in my career, I am working for a large Fortune 50 company from out of state.
My passion for building software started at the age of 10 with my Apple II, dual floppy disks, and Logo. I quickly graduated to a Pascal compiler, and then in high school to C and assembler. I used to go to the library, check out every computer magazine available, and pour over the pages to learn more about what was going on in software and high tech. The irony is that it took my father to tell me that I should be a computer science major.
When I graduated college with a computer science degree, I moved from my hometown in upstate New York to the Boston area. My first company, Easel Corporation, was an up and coming software company that made application development tools for enterprises. The company rose from its humble startup roots in Cummings Park in Woburn to a NASDQ IPO the year I joined them. Today though both Easel and its products are long forgotten, with it best remembered now as the company that started the Scrum software development methodology - a post for another day.
From Easel (acquired by VMark), I did a series of startups: ProCD in Danvers (acquired by Axciom), FireFly (acquired by Microsoft), and BumbleBee Technologies (crashed and burned). I also ran my only consulting company focused on helping early stage startups build out their back-end software supporting their web sites, allowing me to work with multiple startups simultaneously. Two of my clients were eventually successfully acquired - Tickle by Monster and Avicenna by Synetic - and a third became my next startup: SilverBack Technologies.
Over the years I have come to appreciate Boston high tech, from the venture capital offices on Winter Street, to the coffee shops in Harvard Square, to the technology companies straddling Route 95. I've met many interesting people, watched the rise and fall of many companies, and been in the middle of technology transformations.
High Tech in the Hub is a blog about software and technology in the Greater Boston Area. I hope you enjoy.