StevenKrein.com

Startup Wisdom!

It was ten years ago this month that Dan, one of my best friend's from high school, and I were putting the pieces in place to launch Webstakes, an online marketing and technology company which would later become Promotions.com. Between December 1995 and December 2002, we got to experience the entire company life cycle -- from start-up with no revenues to growing to $27 million in revenues with almost 200 employees to going public on Nasdaq and seeing a market cap of more than $500 million to ultimately a successful sale to iVillage, another publicly traded company.

I took away a ton of amazing wisdom from the experience that I'm going to begin posting about but today I wanted to address something timely, given the New York City transit strike.

When we were first launching Webstakes, we couldn't have done it without a physical office. For meetings. For a place to house our servers. For the ability for us to collaborate. For a place to log on to the Internet with broadband connection instead of the dial up we had at home. For a place to hang the white board with the milestones which were critical to launching version 1.0 of Webstakes. For a place to make and receive phone calls. For the ability to say "we have an office."

Today, I'm building my new company, OrganizedWisdom, as a virtual company with a team of extremely talented people each in different locations. I'm proud to say "we don't have an office."

Everyone is working together remotely on getting the first version of OrganizedWisdom ready for launch in early 2006. Our collaboration is done online using a great product called Basecamp where we post documents, manage deadlines and post messages.  If we need meetings in person, we're doing it in "third places" like Starbucks. We have dedicated servers located at godaddy.com. We use Typepad for the corporate Website and this blog. We access the Internet from home with broadband connection using Road Runner. Everyone has cell phones and we have unlimited phone calling with Vonage and are able to receive calls anywhere using Skype.  Instant messaging using AIM.  The cost of this launch will be a mere fraction of the cost that we incurred when we launched Webstakes back in 1995. The convenience factor is equally appealing.

So, why I am writing about this today. Unlike most people who work and/or live in New York, our work day is completely unaffected by the fact there is no subway, bus or transit service (this is not to say that it doesn't matter that there is a strike because it does negatively affect so many people around me). It does, however, underscore how much easier it is for certain businesses to allow people to work remotely so as to not be affected by transit strikes, weather or long commutes.

There was in an interesting article in BusinessWeek two weeks ago about the trend of companies allowing people to work from home called "The Easiest Commute of All". It talks about the increasing percentage of people who are working from home...and how companies are finding that allowing workers the flexibility to work remotely actually contributes to increased productivity. (Sun Microsystems says "its virtual workers are 15% more productive than their office-tethered brethren. Our people working these remote schedules are the happiest employees we have, and they have the lowest attrition rates." More than 50% of their workers are able to work from home.

I believe that the one positive thing about this transit strike is that it will cause more businesses to consider allowing their workers to work remotely from home.  I'm not sure how long we'll be able to build this company with no office at all but I'm a believer that, as the article says, "the future of work belongs to those who will log their hours when they want, how they want, and, most important, where they want. Companies will hire brains, not bodies."

Free Day Wisdom!

I'm taking 5 of my 155 annual Free Days and going to South Beach with my brother Howard. I received several emails from people I know asking me about my previous post on Free Days. 

I found a few great articles on The Strategic Coach web site that goes into them in a little more detail:

1. Free Days: Booking time to rejuvenate before — not after — your productive periods.
2. The Freedom of Free Time
3. Taking Great Free Time - Obstacles and Strategies
4. Freedom and Rejuvenation

A Little Music Wisdom

I really enjoy listening to new music - not just new music, as in "brand new music", but new music as in "I haven't heard that artist or song before" new music."

However, when it comes to searching for new music for my iPod,  I'm so lazy that I end up listening to the same songs from the same artists over and over again.  Almost always, I downloaded it in the first place because someone I know told me to listen to it. I rarely "hunt down" anything new or someone new to listen to, therefore music ends up being one area of my life where I rely exclusively on the wisdom of others for direction.

In fact, I rely so much on other people for music, I have never had any wisdom about music to offer anyone, ever.

Until now.

My brother-in-law Nat was over for dinner a few weeks ago and showed me an amazing new "music discovery service" called Pandora. You just type in one of your favorite songs or artists and they launch a streaming music station with various songs from other artists they know you'll enjoy. This isn't just recommending music because they think you'll like it - they know you'll like it!  If you happen to not like the recommended song (which hasn't happened to me), you just click a button and skip to the next song. This becomes a fully-customized, commercial-free radio station that is available for free to anyone who want to listen (although I do think you can pay for a premium edition).

It was founded by a guy named Tim Westergren and is powered by the Music Genome Project, the most comprehensive analysis of music ever undertaken. The site says:

"Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like."

I'm hooked. This service is music wisdom at its finest.

155 Free Days Per Year

Eight years ago I started going to an amazing entrepreneurial coaching program called The Strategic Coach. It has become a big part of my life and I'll probably reference it quite often in my posts.

One of the reasons I joined was because I was working 18-20 hours a day, 6-7 days per week. The program is conducted in group format with roughly 40 men and women entrepreneurs in the same room. One of the first things I remember about the first session was how many men over 50 years old had stood up and said that they worked all the way through their marriages, their kids childhoods and their 30's and 40's and how taking vacations were few and far between. They were building businesses and tending to making as much money as possible but few were tending to their personal lives.

That was a segway into what the program calls Free Days. They are defined as complete days, midnight to midnight where you don't do anything business related. No business meetings. No business email. No business voice mail or phone calls. No reading article or magazines related to business. You get the idea. Sounds close to impossible and believe me, it's easy to come up with reasons why you could never do that or why it's easier said that done. I know. At the time, I hadn't taken a real Free Day in about five years. I worked every weekend and never took a vacation without checking voice mail or email several times - I even canceled several vacations because things were too busy at work. Well, that was about to charge.

Dan Sullivan is the entrepreneur who developed the program and he's an amazing person for several reasons but for the purposes of this post, I'll tell you about one of the things that inspires me the most. Dan takes 155 Free days off every year. Now, that sounds like a lot (and it is) but he sets up his calendar a year in advance so that it works. Everyone in his company and all of his clients know that he takes off 14 weeks per year plus every Saturday and holiday. Now, Dan doesn't have children but he does have a great wife who is also is his business partner and they travel the world visiting all the places they love during their 155 Free Days. Dan theory, which he proved himself, is that if you properly rejuvenate yourself during Free Days by not doing any business-related work, when you are working, you are at peak performance. He had thousands of clients who had never taken Free Days before, now taking time off from working all the time to be with their family. Most of them will tell you that they are enjoying a higher quality of life and getting to know their spouses and their children unlike ever before. The time they spend is quality not just face time. They stopped burning out or feeling burnt out and always approach things with a fresh, clear mind. In fact, most also will tell you that their businesses are better off and that they actually make a lot more money and have a lot more fun when they take more free time.

I set out to try these Free Days and since I always worked weekends or done business-related things on weekends, I started by taking Sundays off. I even stopped reading BusinessWeek and doing email on Sunday nights. I worked my way to taking Saturdays off too. I even stopped returning business calls that I didn't get a chance to return during the week. Stopped surfing the Internet reading articles related to business. Well, before I knew it, with every weekend off, I was up to 104 Free Days per year. Add in the 10 or so holidays and I was up to do 114 Free Days per year. That left me about 8 weeks more to spread out throughout the year. I planned 5 of those weeks to be around the same time every year. 2 weeks off at end of December; 1 week at end August; 1 week around my wedding anniversary at the beginning of November; 1 week around July 4th and three random weeks throughout the year that were flexible for us to plan.

Not only do the Free Days work for me but they give me quality time with my kids and the rest of my family and friends. When I'm with them, I'm not distracted by calls or emails that are work related. When I return from Free Days, whether it's every Monday morning or after a long vacation, I am rejuvinated and ready to go. Fresh ideas. Fresh mind. Guilt free. Whenever I'm feeling burnt out it's usually because I got sloppy with my Free Days, giving execuses to myself for why I can't take them right now or why I need to do something business related on a weekend.

In summary, since I started taking Free Days this is what I've learned:

1. Make the commitment to yourself - I had to decided I was ready for myself and since then it's been a non-negotiable for me not to take them. It's the lifestyle I want to maintain, forever.
   
2. Plan Free Days in advance - I set up my calendar and know which days I'm taking off 1 year in advance. Some are planned vacations away. Others are just hanging out around my home. Some are with the entire family and some are just with my wife.
3. Determine how many Free Days you want to take per year - 155 works for me. If you don't have control of your own time, you might be able to only take 50 or 75 or 100. Whatever works for you - the main thing is to take quality time outside of working, regardless of how much time it is.
   
4. Tell the people around you about Free Days so they can help keep you Free - if I start doing something business-related, my wife reminds me that it's a Free Day. I stop and get refocused and put it away until I'm back at work.

This is what works for me. What works for you?

A Trainer on My iPod

While I have been able to maintain my weight in the range I'm happy with using Body for Life (see my previous post, "40lbs of Wisdom"), I have felt over the past year or so that I have hit a plateau at the gym. Body for Life is great but I'm not in the shape I should be in for the amount of time I put in. I like the Body for Life workouts but they were getting a little monotonous (after six years).

Then, last month I had lunch with my friend Jeff who told me about a new audio based workout he was using that was developed by his friend David Greenwalt, a lifestyle and fitness coach and author of a book and program on body transformation called The Leanness Lifestyle.

Now, I had heard of David Greenwalt before through several other friends. I knew he developed the very successful online body transformation coaching program called ClubLifestyle but I unfortunately had never taken the time to check it out.

Jeff told me about a new paid-subscription program David was working on called TheMuscleAudioProfessor, a series of audio files of a workout that you download to your ipod and listen to while you workout. He described it literally as a fitness trainer on your ipod (actually, not just a trainer - it's David Greenwalt, one of the best out there). Jeff was raving about the improvement in his workouts and how the results he was seeing were literally beyond what he had ever seen before.

To make the long story short, since the program was not yet released to the public, Jeff connected me with David and I tried the workout. I downloaded it to my ipod and worked out three times in one week using it. WOW! The workouts were amazing. David's audio kept me going at great pace and it was one of the best workouts I have ever experienced.

I knew this could be be huge and it could change the lives of everyone who listened to it. But I also knew that David was planning on charging a subscription fee for this (something around $100). I knew this was amazing value and worth every dollar but I thought this would limit the number of people whose lives would be changed by it. So, after many, many phone calls with David, I convinced him to turn MuscleAudio into a free podcast supported by advertising and available on iTunes (and on his website)

David said he would give it a try and within a few days it was the #1 podcast on itunes for losing weight. David has now agreed to create 12 of his best workouts as podcasts, available for free to anyone who wants it. I urge you to give it a try for yourself - your workouts will never be the same.

If you have itunes, just go to Podcast Directory and search for the Muscle Audio Flex 4 Workouts by David Greenwalt podcast (he also had a Club Lifestyle podcast but that's great body transformation content to listen to, not the workout I'm talking about.) If you don't have itunes, goto visit David's blog where you can download the podcasts directly.

His MuscleAudio Flex 4 Workout is a 12 week program but is setup as weekly download. He's currently released 6 of the 12 Flex Workouts but start with Flex4 Workout #1. Do each Flex Workout 3 times per week week and then download or listen to the next week's podcast. I'm on week #4 now and I love it. I already see a huge difference in the amount of weight I'm lifting and how I look. I will keep you posted but make sure to give it a try for yourself.

In summary, since I started downloading my workouts this is what I've learned:

1. Body for Life helped give me the motivation I needed to get to the gym everyday but after six years of that routine I felt I could get more out of each workout.
2. My new iPod based workouts with David Greenwalt are 10 times better than any workout I have ever done. I now subscribe and listen to his Muscle Audio Flex4 Workout every week and it has become my new favorite way to workout.

This is what works for me. If you have an iPod or another mp3 player, download his workout and give it a try!

40 lbs of Wisdom!

My health is my #1 priority. For me, it takes priority over all my other commitments because I realize that if I am healthy, fit and feeling good, I have the best chance of being around for a long long time and enjoying my life, my family, my friends and my work.

Health wasn't always #1 for me. Six years ago I was almost 35-40 lbs heavier than I am now. I put taking care of myself last on a long priority list - everything came before my health. My priorities were working, then working more, then family time, going out with friends and then sleeping in. Then maybe, just maybe, once in a while, I'd get motivated to workout.

What didn't work.
I never went to the gym and whenever I did go, I didn't have a strategy. I didn't eat right and whenever I thought I was eating right, I still didn't lose weight.  I didn't "have any time" (i.e. make any time) to workout and it was getting worse, not better.

The bigger problem was it wasn't just about being overweight that bothered me.  My dad has heart disease. He had open-heart, quadruple bypass surgery 24 years ago when he was only 50. Both my grandfathers died of heart disease. I knew I had to do something but didn't know how.

Then, one summer day in August 1999, a friend made a book recommendation to me that helped me take the first step. The book was called Body for Life, by Bill Phillips. 

What did work.
I had seen many books over the years but this book and The Body for Life Program was different for several reasons. One reason was that my friend Brian was using it and he had lost weight and kept it off by following the recommended program. The other, more compelling reason for me was that it gave me an easy plan that I knew I could follow for a long time (hence the title "Body for Life".) This plan wouldn't take up a lot of time, which made all the difference in the world to me at the time (the difference between getting motivated to workout every morning and not working out because "it would take too long")

Within 6 months I went from 218 to 180 and by the time I got married a year later I was down to 174. The program was easy to follow and I kept it off for the past six years, maintaining a healthy weight of 175 lbs. Besides the workout plan, I also used protein/nutrition shakes in between meals and began mixing a protein with a carb whenever I eat. That kept me from eating the junk I used to pick up when I got hungry in between meals.

I've recommended the book to dozens of friends and most people I have recommended it to have also lost the weight and kept it off.  I know that there are a lot of the other books on the market that work - some just initially and then people fall off the wagon because it's either too cumbersome or to hard to stay motivated and others really work because the author connects with you for one reason or another. For me, Body for Life works. It's a long term plan that is easy to follow.

In summary, over the six years of working out and keeping my weight off, this is what I've learned:

1. Set an actual weight goal that you want to reach or maintain - I like to be at 175lbs. Some people like a body fat goal. Whatever works for you but I know just saying "I want to lose weight" and not committing to an actual number doesn't work.
2. Find a fitness program to follow that works for you - as I mentioned above, I really like Body for Life, by Bill Phillips because it's not a huge time commitment that keeps me motivated to workout almost every day. The biggest thing is that I knew I could get motivated to do the workout and not burn out after a few weeks or a few months. That is key to me. The program only takes approximately 45 minutes, 3 times per week for weight training and 20 minutes, 3 times per week for cardio. There is a reason its been on the NYTimes Bestsellers list for more than six years. I am just starting to use a new program called Flex4 that I will tell you about in my next post.
3. Set the same time every day as your time to workout - the mornings work for me. I know the nights work for other people. I like the idea of getting it behind me before I start my day, before I take a shower and before I eat anything. That way, I have few excuses not to work out. 
4. Find a place you like to workout. He recommended joining a gym close to my home that was on my way to work so I would be forced to workout before I go to the office. This way, I would bring my clothes to the gym and get ready for work there. Worked like a charm. I joined Reebok Sports Club because its across the street from where I live and I stopped there before going to work. It was great but since we moved, I now workout at the gym in our building because its easy and has great facilities
5. Learn how to eat well and, if necessary, find a program that works for you. Once again, Bill Phillips wrote another book I really like called Eating for Life. It elaborates on the eating program in Body for Life and is an eating plan that was realistic for me. It is also a plan that makes sense to me - 6 days per week eat 5-6 times per day a simple, balanced protein/carbs combination of normal food like turkey on whole wheat. The best part was that it gives me one day per week called a Free Day where I eat anything I want - and I never miss a Free Day.

This is what works for me. What works for you?

Share Your Health Wisdom!

A lot of people have asked me why I'm going to launch OrganizedWisdom focused exclusively on health and health care. Well, there are three main reasons: (fyi - if you haven't read my previous post describing the company, click here first).

1. My own experience using "the wisdom of others" when making health-related decisions and judgments for myself and my family. It was through wisdom of others, not information found in a typical Google or WebMD search, that I found success for a lot of health-related issues in my life -- asthma, infertility, health insurance, weight loss, weight training, a high fever when our daughter was six weeks old...this list goes on and on. Three quick examples I'll share are: Through the wisdom of my friend Jack's little brother, my exercise-induced asthma is under control and I can exercise confidently every day without fear of an attack.  Through the wisdom of two other friends Rich Schoor (a doctor) and Peter Kash (a biotech venture capitalist), my wife and I were able to conceive naturally for both our daughters after almost 2 years and thousands of dollars of infertility treatments seeing the wrong doctors by switching to different doctors and different treatments.  Finally, through the wisdom of my new friend Paul Zane Pilzer, I learned about a new program called a Health Savings Account that has allowed me to cut my monthly health insurance premiums in half while saving thousands of dollars a year in a tax-deferred savings account. This is just the beginning...I have countless other examples where the wisdom of others helped us through a health-related experience (which, by the way, includes doctor's wisdom too (i.e. my brother Howard and cousin Scott.))  From finally losing weight and getting in shape, to dealing with a high fever when our daughter was six weeks old, to understanding false test results for serious diseases like cystic fibrosis...as I said earlier, the list goes on an on).

2. Although it seems as though there is more than enough health information online, the best stuff still isn't available. As you see from all of the reasons from my story above, the "best information" cannot be found easily on the Internet because its not on the Internet...yet. It's in the heads of the millions of people walking around the streets or the person sitting beside you on the bus who doesn't realize the value of the positive or negative experience they have had and the impact it can have on the lives of those people facing similar challenges to them. There are plenty of consumer medical sites and organizations with great clinical information about a disease or illness. And there are definitely more than enough chat rooms and message boards to sift through to read about peoples experiences. What you can't find is a place to go where the health experiences from real people are organized in a useful way so that you can make decisions and judgments about where to turn next.

3. Just about everyone online is looking for health information. 80% of the people using the Internet or 95 million people are searching for health information online according to Pew/Internet Health Information Online Report which was published in May 2005. I can honestly say that I don't think I know one person who hasn't searched for some health information online. (this includes my wife, my parents and even the most technology-phobic friends.  Enough said.

So, its for those reasons, among many others, that we're looking for people who have faced a wide variety of health challenges, either having experienced it themselves or through a family member or close friend and are willing to share them with others. We're looking for people who want to make a difference. People who don't want others to have a negative experience when they are faced with similar challenges. People with experiences dealing with ADHD, Aging, Allergies & Asthma, Arthritis, Brain & Nervous System, Cancer, Chronic Pain, Depression, Diabetes, Diet & Nutrition, Digestive Disorders, General Health, Heart, Infertility, Liver & Kidney Disease, Men's Health, Mental Health, Parenting, Pregnancy, Reproductive Health, Sexual Health & Relationships, Skin & Beauty or Women's Health.

If you are interested in being among our first contributors, all you have to do is visit The Organized Wisdom Web site at www.organizedwisdom.com and complete the I Want to Share My Wisdom! Form. Let us know you want to share and once we hear from you, we'll let you know the best way to get started so you can share your wisdom!  

Share What You Know!

So, I've told you in a previous post about the purpose of my personal blog, TheWisdomBlog. Well, now I want to share my mission with you and the new media company I am building.

If you know me, you know that I enjoy helping others. Especially when those "others" are helping "others". In other words, I really like helping people who help other people. It's the multiplier effect. I help two friends and I know that they, in turn, help two friends. Then those friends help two friends...and so on and so on until finally, it starts to look a lot like a 1970's Breck Hair commercial.

Using that same theory, I want to inspire 10 million people to share their first-hand experience with others. My new venture, OrganizedWisdom™, is an open-source media brand devoted to inspiring people to share their first-hand experiences with others so that anyone can access the resulting wisdom and be able to make better judgments and decisions for themselves and for their families.

This will not be a traditional media company where professional editors, writers and producers create the content.  Searching, reading, listening to or watching OrganizedWisdom, you'll access the world's "wisdom" from an open community of contributors that will include both experts and ordinary people who are committed to sharing, teaching and inspiring others by sharing their first-hand experiences. We'll be combining a searchable database of wisdom with blog-style, user-created editorial and also feature innovative audio and video podcasts via iTunes.

OrganizedWisdom is about sharing. And much of it comes straight from you.

It's commonly referred to as user-created content, or open-source media, and it's created in The OrganizedWisdom Studio, where we make it simple for people to transform the useful elements of first-hand experiences, and infuse them with the insights and confidence that only comes from having “been there and done that.”  While anyone, from an ordinary person to a health care professional, can submit content for OrganizedWisdom, whether or not something is "wise" will be determined and filtered by you based on its popularity, the credibility of the source of the wisdom, how long it has been around and its ability to help predict future events. 

Health & Health care
We will eventually cover many important topics that affect peoples lives, however, for now the focus is going to be on organizing the world's wisdom about health and health care.

Rather than focus on standard medical news or generic information, or negative things like how bad the health care problem is in America, we want the focus on themes of how things are progressing, new innovations in medicine, insurance, new leaders, new ideas, new solutions, new cures and people's life-altering stories. This is not a place to get medical advice or a substitute for professional care but simply a way for people to have access to the health-related "wisdom of the crowds."

By providing organized health-related wisdom, our programming will be designed to help people find the right treatment, the right doctors or health care providers, the right insurance plan or the proper emotional support.

So just to recap, the difference between TheWisdomBlog and OrganizedWisdom is that:

• TheWisdomBlog™ is my personal blog dedicated to sharing my wisdom and the wisdom of others who I find valuable and interesting.
• OrganizedWisdom™ is my media company focused on inspiring others to share their wisdom to help other people. Check back to the site early next year for the launch!

TheWisdomBlog™

I was inspired by many different people to launch my blog, TheWisdomBlog™, and begin my journey into blogging.   

Some are personal friends. Some are business friends. Some are people I've never met. Either way, it is their early adoption and transparency that I respect the most and is helping me take the first step. The first "bloggers" that come to mind are:

1) Unity Stoakes who was my first friend with a personal blog (he was also the Chief Marketing Officer of two of the companies when I was CEO.) His blog is, as he says, "For friends and family: the chronicles, recipes, and lists of Unity".
2) Fred Wilson's blog "avc" was the first venture capital blog I read. I like Fred's blog not only for its posts about the Internet but because he has an obvious love for his family that comes through in many of his posts. Fred wasn't an investor in Webstakes but I've heard great things about him!
3) Jason Calacanis, someone I know from his Silicon Alley Reporter Days, is an entrepreneur with an obvious love of being really transparent and brutally honesty which keep me curiously tuning in. His blog is about a lot of things, including the Blog world and you never know what you're going to get when you login.
4) Seth Godin, is an author and a former competitor (him selling his last company Yoyodyne to Yahoo helped me take my last company Webstakes public). Seth's blog is about marketing and he usually has something interesting to read or review.
5) Steve Brotman, another friend and venture capitalist who blogs (although not as frequently as I'd like) and, finally
6) John Battelle, someone I've never met but enjoy his insights into the current landscape of the Internet.

Each of these people, directly and indirectly, inspired me to take the leap and launch my blog.

TheWisdomBlog™ is going to allow me to share, in blog format, my own wisdom and the wisdom of others who I find valuable and interesting. I think the interesting thing about "wisdom" is that what constitutes wisdom is in the eye of the beholder. It's an intangible quality gained through first-hand experience and whether or not something is wise is generally determined by an individual in a practical sense by its popularity, how long it has been around, and its ability to predict future events.

Since what I consider wisdom might not be considered wisdom by someone else, I figure that at the very least, TheWidsomBlog™ will be a great way for my children to have access to the organized wisdom of their dad and the wisdom of people their dad felt were "wise". And then when they're old enough one day (my oldest is only two and a half and youngest is three months) they can decide for themselves whether this wisdom is valuable or not. At least it will be here if they want it.

My posts are divided into five categories, each representing an area of my life that I spend time thinking about: Health, Family, Personal, Business and Money. I'll rotate throughout the different categories so some days it will be about health, other days it will be about business.

I'm also going to attempt to be as transparent as possible as I blog but I'd love feedback from you so either email me at steve@organizedwisdom.com or log a comment in the link below each post that say "Comment".

My First Post!

I am an entrepreneur and have been for more than a decade. I have started and helped build technology companies, marketing companies and media companies. I live, work and play in New York City and love every minute of it.

I am a husband and father of two beautiful daughters. We're staying in the city and planning on raising our children here despite the pleadings from family and friends to move out to the suburbs.

I dabble in investing, mostly in publicly-held technology-related companies because of my obsession with technology, gadgets and the Internet. I also love a day at the beach at the Jersey Shore with my family, going to Central Park with friends or scuba diving in the Caribbean with my wife.

If you want to know more about my background, my complete bio is available by clicking here!