Skipped high school, went to college at 13, B.S. in CSCI at 16. MSIS and MBA at 21.Went from dBase II developer in 1983 to RDBMS development expert. Early career also included network engineering. Designed metadata frameworks, app development tools for the frameworks, and the applications built with these components for many years.Moved into management at Scopus, running a "Q"-style group supporting and gearing up presales engineers. Founded Octane with three partners in 1997, sold it in 2000 for $3.2 billion. Created Dexterra product, then Airframe Business Software, Inc. startup. Currently growing mixed-model SaaS company Airframe at a conservative pace, in keeping with the state of the industry.I sometimes become involved in startups, consulting on formation issues, equity structure, financing strategy and tactics, product design/development, product management and/or product marketing.My favorite aspect of this work is in designing and planning complex products/product lines, taking into account factors like market realities, elegance of design, and technical necessities and limitations...striving to make the products as useful as possible and delivering practical value. Startups must not fall into a trap of heavy marketing at the expense of value delivered to customers.For similar reasons, I also enjoy planning and building companies, establishing cooperative, complementary teams and predicting the resources each key person will need to add to and maintain the momentum of the company.Specialties: Team-building, product planning, application design, engineering management