Time To Build That Airplane

I can’t remember where I read it, but I remember someone once saying that doing a startup is like jumping off a cliff and trying to build a plane on the way down.

Well, on Friday my very talented friend Ian Lotinsky and I jumped off the cliff, leaving “good” jobs at Lockheed Martin to start our own company. We’re not talking publicly about what we’re working on quite yet, but as we get closer to launch look for news here.

I want to thank everyone at Lockheed for making it a pretty good place to work. But my tech lead JP Dinh deserves special thanks, as he is the most amazing lead I can imagine.

The first year I was at Lockheed I was supposed to be on vacation but instead got stuck working at the office until 2 AM on a nightmare project. I was exhausted, starving, and furious that I was fixing someone else’s broken code instead of hanging out at the beach. At 1 AM JP came back into the office just to bring me and another developer Chinese food. That small gesture brought me back from the brink of giving up, and the project eventually became a success.

Someday I hope that my company grows to the point where I am managing other developers. If I am able to be 1/10th the manager that JP is, I will have succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.

Here’s hoping that me and Ian can figure out how to build that plane before we go splat ;)