Dad, when are you going to be the boss?

After my early post-college illustrious career as a Floral Conveyance Specialist, I was Assistant to the Telemarketing Representative at one firm, then did telesales at another company before getting my big break at Netscape, which at the time was ~225 people. I worked there for 4 years and when I left the company was ~2000 people.

Since then I've been getting involved in startups at earlier and earlier stages, culminating most recently with Efficient Frontier, where I joined as employee #3 (Beefcake & Trish came before me). EF's since become the most sophisticated and successful SEM in the world, and yet my 8-year-old son Luca keeps asking me:

"Dad, when are YOU going to be the boss?!?"

Having lived in Silicon Valley most of his life, most of his friends' dads either started their own company, run their own company or sold their own company, and have private jets, trampolines, Maserati's, McMansions on flat ground (or dysfunctional marriages) to show for it.

My son, though, is no idiot. He knows that being The Man in Silicon Valley means starting your own company and so for the past 18 months he's been asking me when I'm going to start my own company.

I'm finally taking his advice. Last Friday was my last day at Efficient Frontier, and now I'm working on a couple ideas I have for startups, one of which I hope to settle on and turn into a business.

I'll keep writing on Searchquant from time to time, but neither of my startup ideas is in the search space, so I may start to digress into other areas in the coming months.

Son, I'm the Boss now!