As I started college, I started to build software products that I could sell to people over the Web.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I know one business, and that's how to make software.
I built websites for myself. I didn't want to work for anyone else. I came from a science background, so I approached things fairly analytically.
I was really just a hard-core geek, if you will, in 1996, and was building websites as a hobby. I started doing a lot of web design and development and built my first website on the now-defunct GeoCities platform.
I produce a lot of content, both to help others online and to promote my business.
I'm really good at making software for publishing.
I had to learn everything about manufacturing, patents and how to run a business, and eventually I came up with an prototype that worked.
When I started Netscape I was brand new out of college and all the aspects of building a business, like balance sheets and hiring people, were new to me.
My background was computer science and business school, so eventually I worked my way up where I was running product groups - development, testing, marketing, user education.
EBay gave me the framework to discover I was an e-commerce entrepreneur. I touched everything, from shipping to logistics.
As a child, I did what any normal kid who grew up without any electricity would do - I spent countless hours working on a computer wired to my parents' car battery... and learned how to code. This natural passion for computers lead me into the Internet market during the late 1990s and early 2000s.