Bootstrapping Using Services: George Anderson, CEO of Ninth Wave (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

George offers another case study for our very popular Bootstrapping Using Services track.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of background did you have?

George Anderson: I was born in Long Island. I found myself in technology by accident. My first job was through a referral from my family. My father sent me for an interview. I got a job working for an analytical laboratory in New Jersey.

I learned a lot working closely with the President of that company. He took a liking to me and gave me a lot of opportunities. One of those opportunities was in computing. He approached me one day and said, “I would like you to implement word processes for the office.”

I looked around and said to myself, “Well, there’s nobody else here in the room with me. I guess he is talking to me.” Then I said, “Andre, you know I don’t know anything about computers or word processing, right?” He just said, “I know, but you will figure it out.” That was good enough for me.

As a result of that, I went to IBM and took some classes there. I dug into their technology and implemented word processes for him. From there, I went to do several accounting systems and fell into 70 hours a week of programming. That was my accidental entry into technology. 

Sramana Mitra: What time frame are we talking about here?

George Anderson: Longer ago than I care to admit, but it was in the early 80’s. 

Sramana Mitra: The reason why I asked that is because I need to figure out what is happening in the broader world and where the industry is in its evolution.  This helps me understand the story better. 

George Anderson: Being in the industry as long as I have been, I see the same trends over and over again. What a lot of people see as new technology, I just see as evolution. It gives me a lot of interesting perspectives on a lot of the things that are happening out there.

Sramana Mitra: There is evolution and there is this continuity. The reason the pace of change has accelerated so much is because we had some major discontinuities in technology.

The way that I look at it is, chips have gotten smaller and smaller to the extent that we can have a supercomputer in our pockets in the smartphone. This enabled Steve Jobs to create smartphones as a paradigm. This was in 2007.

Before that, the other paradigm shift that changed things was the internet coming together as a commercial force in 1994 giving rise to search and e-commerce. There is also the social media phenomenon that changed communication completely.

Now, we are in the artificial intelligence era. These are interesting phases of technology. Tell me how this early story bridges to your entrepreneurial journey. What are the steps that happened in between?

George Anderson: As I progressed with technology, I fell into consulting. I didn’t do that by design. I was working with people in technology companies that sold a lot of accounting software. I was the technology personnel on the team. Everybody else was in sales.

Things got rough. It was around Black Monday when the market crashed. Things at the company weren’t going well and I needed a job. The first opportunity that presented itself was in consulting. I accidentally fell into consulting and I really liked it. I got to work with a lot of smart people. I did a lot of work on Wall Street.

As a consultant, I felt like I was able to focus on the technology and not worry too much about corporate politics. I was able to keep my head down and get some great work done. I enjoyed that.

I know you are an author. I have also written a few books on technology. McGraw-Hill was my publisher. I had a lot of fun doing that. I had a co-author in my first book. He’s a gentleman by the name of Alex Burson.

Alex was a bit older than me. He kept saying, “George, what is next? What do you want to do next? Do you want to be a consultant forever?” I used to jokingly say, “Alex, as long as they pay my bill, I’m okay.” He kept going with that line of questioning.

I had two opportunities in front of me. One, I was offered some nice positions with financial technology firms. Merrill Lynch and J.P. Morgan offered me a Managing Director position. If I took that type of role, I won’t be hands-on in technology anymore. They will be looking for me to do higher-level jobs and manage people.

I wasn’t going to have a lot of fun. If I don’t have a lot of fun, I thought, then I wouldn’t be great at it. I stuck with the technology. I founded a company called Enterprise Engineering in 1995. I founded that company based on my background in technology and Wall Street.

I started a consultancy firm. I basically did all things data for Wall Street as I would call it. That was the beginning of my entrepreneurial career as opposed to being just a hands-on technologist.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Bootstrapping Using Services: George Anderson, CEO of Ninth Wave
1 2 3 4 5 6