My Journey from CEO to CTO to just being me
It's easy to get distracted by titles. I have been the CEO of a mapping startup, CTO of a book publishing company and Product Owner at a secure collaboration SaaS platform. But I've never been happier than just being, "Mash, the guy who helps people get stuff done." Before I can tell you about that, I need to tell you about this… When I was 14 my Mom, a 5-foot tenacious Vietnamese business woman, taught me how to sew. Yes, needle-and-thread-in-a-sewing-machine-making-clothes kind of sewing. She would drive me down to the fabric store and we would pick out cool colors and Hawaiian prints that my friends might like on their Clam-Diggers. If you don’t know what a clam-digger is, imagine going down to the beach to forage around in the shallow water for clams. If you wear pants, they will get soaked. But if you wear shorts, you’ll get cold. So clam-diggers are basically short-pants. At 14 I didn’t want to learn how to sew clam-diggers, but I did know that my friends and I ...