

Who was your Childhood Inspiration? - ed

Personally, I was never more motivated to learn about computers than when I would look through Kim Schmitz's (aka Kimble) photo galleries online. I think anyone who visited that site as a pubescent boy will understand what I'm talking about.<p>For those of you who don't remember him, Kimble was a flamboyant, very (temporarily) wealthy, German hacker whose life consisted of buying exotic cars, hanging out with models, and traveling all over the world. Also, um, there was something about insider trading (but that's hardly inspirational).<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Schmitz" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Schmitz</a><p>
Who inspired you to focus on technology/startups?
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vlad
Steve Pavlina's and Paul Graham's articles circa 2002 and up; Bill
Gates/Microsoft (QBasic, Visual Basic, C); volunteer work and after school
clubs to learn that it doesn't matter if you're making money/getting
graded/successful/one of the starters, if you're around smart people and
having fun and learning a lot; business articles in general; learning to focus
on taking things into my own hands and think logically, regardless of what
people say is possible or isn't; thinking (maybe mistakingly) that inventing
or discovering something is commonplace and therefore I have to do it.

Childhood inspiration for a startup? I was just happy to be learning English
and didn't have a computer until I was 14.

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iamwil
Never thought about startups until a combination of forces started coming into
play all at the same time. Paul's article on what wealth really is, gave a
different perspective.

As for childhood inspiration, I don't think I ever had one. I remember liking
to read picture books on robots. That's probably where some of it comes from.

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ordersup
my mother actually... for saying the internet is "no place to make 'real
money'"

(i tend to try my best to prove people wrong w/ they say something i'm doing
is impossible)

needless to say, after making money as a PHP hacker for several years now...
she still asks if i've looked for a real job. heh...

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jey
What counts as a real job to her? Does she realize that computers and the web
are now an integral part of society?

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dfranke
Paul Graham as of when "Why Nerds Are Unpopular" was published. Eric Raymond
before that.

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nreece
Bill Gates :)

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ks
MacGuyver

