MCW Software ... The Dream - Part 1

As founder of MCW Software, I wanted to take a moment to write a short history of the dream behind MCW Software. I hope you enjoy reading it.

As a kid growing up in the 80's, we always had computers around the house and like most kids my attraction to them was mainly centered around playing games. There were games on the Apple 2E like the Oregon Trail and Lemonade Stand. I also had the good fortune of my dad working in the computer business for EPSON America. Yes, the printer company. At that time, they were competing in the cutthroat industry of selling IBM PC clones. My dad worked in product support and so he was able to get loaners all the time that we tested out at home.

Back in the DOS days, I taught myself to use .bat files to write rudimentary role-playing games by echoing a bunch of characters to the screen. Then, I moved onto GW-BASIC, then from GW-BASIC to QuickBASIC. By the time I was 15, I had completed a pretty good clone of the game Tetris in QuickBASIC and posted the game and source code on CompuServe. A publisher at Wrox found the game and the code and included screen shots and examples from my program on his book which was pretty exciting.

I took Advanced Placement (AP) computer programming courses at Los Altos High School in Hacienda Heights, CA where I learned Logo and Pascal and stayed up all night making prototype 3D graphics and Windows-clone GUI engines. It was during those early years that I dreamed of one day starting a software company. I even drew the picture below. The circular area in front of the building is supposed to be a man-made lake and that's me waving on top of the building. :)

At that time, I came up with the name MicroComputerWorld or MCW. My vision was much grander than just to create the next Microsoft. I believed that kids and parents, businesses, governments, etc. should learn to use computers and software. I wanted everyone to be excited about the future that was coming. After all, we were in a time when "personal computers" were revolutionizing everything and the dawn of the Internet Age was starting to appear. But your average person didn't understand how then could put themselves in a position to benefit from let alone contribute to the development of these breakthroughs. Worse yet, there was a stigma back then around being a "computer nerd" which kept a lot of young people from investing the time necessary to really get good at working with computers. This really concerned me and does to this day. There is so much demand for computer programmers and engineers today and with so many people looking for work it is really a tragedy.

I envisioned inventions powered by software, electronics and robotics that would improve every part of our personal and professional lives. We're seeing these inventions today, especially with our increasing use of the internet and the increasing sophistication of the devices around us. It is amazing to think of the companies and products that have been created in the short span of the last 10 or 20 years.

Well back in high school... my dream would have to wait. After all, these technologies were going to develop fast and I needed to gain more skills, education and experience before being able to build the man-made lake.

To be continued...