DAVID'S STORY
I was born in Detroit, Michigan as the son of two entrepreneur parents. My dad started a manufacturing company with his brothers and an early 1980s green screen software company by himself. My mom studied anatomy and kinesiology and launched a pioneering company designed to strengthen the muscles of the face and reduce the signs of aging. I watched them rise, fall and rise again. I remember my uncle joyfully auctioning steel fasteners at highway robbery prices when we were the only supplier with steel. I spent a Thanksgiving in near silence as we saw the price of oil collapse and realized our massive investment in oil exploration products would go unpurchased. I spent a long night holding my mother’s hand when her office flooded and her intellectual property was ruined. I was there when IBM called my father to buy his software company. Boom. Bust. Boom again.
It primed me for a life of entrepreneurial adventure. It is said that people who live through battles never find them glorious, the glory is written in by historians after the fact. I can believe it for real life and death struggles. Yet, in the wild times of entrepreneurial life, I have found the joy and thrill in both the ups and downs. My parents always bore the struggles of commerce with the mindset that if worst came to worst, they could be happy with each other and their kids and not much else.
When one believes they can be happy with nothing the wild ride is just that – a wild ride and it is always fun. (and yes, it can be stressful too). In the spirit of the free market, my childhood had a “laisse faire” quality to it that was hands off, even for the time. The freedom allowed me to grow my own inner sense of self discipline and allowed me to apply my own structure to life. So while I often made mistakes (one of my good friends loves to show me the little league picture with every child neatly arranged in uniform while I am unkept, disheveled and without my cap) I learned a great deal about self-reliance and personal responsibility.
If I grew as a wild vine meandering where life took me, my high school was the trellis of rigid structure that allowed me to climb and grow. Brother Rice is a very serious, all male catholic school outside of Detroit. The strict rules and iron discipline never bothered me – instead it was structure and I let my vine climb around it and grow to new heights of academic and athletic achievement. Brother Rice was a modern day Sparta with a strong dose of enlightened Athens mixed in. I put on 20 pounds of muscle each year I was there and developed a strong grounding in STEM as well as History, English and Theology.
The signature moment for me came just before Christmas of my senior year when Harvard’s athletic department called me and asked if I would like to play football for The Crimson. It was a storybook ending to a wonderful childhood. Four years at Harvard was a massive growing experience for me. In many ways, I was woefully ignorant and lacking in perspective when I arrived. It did not take long for my friends and colleagues to shine light on the misconceptions and naïve ideals. I learned as much at the dining table as I did in the classroom or athletic field. Like a whetstone, Harvard ground away my rough edges and sharpened my critical thinking skills.
