1990

After losing my job at Logical Choice for Computing I found myself at a cross-roads. I started looking for a job and applied to  a big software chain at the time called Egghead Software. I interviewed to become the manager of their store in El Segundo. Shortly after my interview I got a call with an offer for the position. Around this same time one of my close friends had decided to open his own computer store. I asked him how much capital he had and when he told me I felt it wasn’t enough. I told him he would need more money to get off the ground.

He contacted me again around the same time I was interviewing at Egghead telling me that he had secured a 3rd partner with the additional cash necessary to open the store and asked if I would take a position as an employee to manage his store. I was torn. I had a job offer in hand to manage an established software chain or I could embark on an opportunity to start a new store with all the lessons I’ve learned. I ended up taking the riskier choice and joined my friend at his new company.

Within several months I realized that with all the hard work and time I was committing to this new store I really wanted a stake. I discussed this with the existing 3 partners who were all full-time employees as well and they agreed to let me buy in as a partner at the original capital investment. Not only that, they allowed me to pay it based on deductions from my salary over the course of a year or so (I don’t quite recall the length). With that I became an owner in my first company.

We would go on to be pretty successful for 4 years with all of us drawing decent salaries. I continued to learn so much more about business along the way as well. Unfortunately we ended up having a problem with one of the partners and after considering many options including a buyout we decided that the least complicated way would be to shut down the company and go our separate ways.

My original friend who offered me the job asked if I would be interested in starting yet another company with just the two of us as partners. I agree and we started a new company that would focus more on the consulting aspects of computing. So in 1998 Alternative Computing was born.