There’s a photo from 1992 that I keep close—an old, slightly faded snapshot from 8th grade. I’m standing beside my computer science teacher, proudly grinning in an oversized white school uniform. Behind us is a boxy old DOS machine, humming away in the corner of the lab. That machine—and that teacher—changed my life.
Back then, computers weren’t sleek or sexy. They didn’t fit in your pocket or respond to voice commands. Our school’s computer lab was filled with monochrome monitors, clunky keyboards, and machines running MS-DOS. If you were lucky, you got to type on a system that didn’t freeze mid-program. GWBASIC was our playground. That’s where it all began.
A friend and I spent weeks—months, really—building a trivia game in GWBASIC. It was a humble piece of software by today’s standards. You could type the name of a country, and it would return the capital, population, and a few facts. But what we were most proud of was the “pixel map” of the world. We painstakingly plotted each coordinate, one dot at a time, to recreate the continents on a black screen. Every time the program successfully returned information based on a user’s prompt, it felt like magic. We weren’t just coding—we were creating something from nothing.
Looking back, I see how that early exposure lit a fire in me. I was just a kid in a school uniform, typing away at a green-on-black screen, but it felt like I was building the future.
Today, I am fortunate to lead a B2B eCommerce platform that leverages AI, integrates with complex ERP systems, and supports hundreds of enterprises globally. The systems are smarter now—cloud-native, API-driven, and increasingly powered by generative AI. But the core thrill remains unchanged: solving a real-world problem with code. Creating something useful. Making magic from scratch.
There’s a throughline from that pixelated trivia game to the platforms we build today. The hustle it took to get every country aligned on that map mirrors the hustle it takes now to bring product data together, or to architect an AI engine that can answer complex search queries. The curiosity that led me to explore GWBASIC still drives my obsession with innovation. And most importantly, the inspiration that teacher gave me still echoes in every new line of code our team writes, every new feature we ship, and every problem we dare to solve.
Sometimes, people talk about “overnight success” or the “big break.” But in truth, it’s usually a slow burn. A teacher who stays after school to help. A lab with just enough functioning machines. A friend who says, “Let’s build something.” Inspiration, luck, and hustle—those three have a way of finding each other when you show up every day and keep typing.
So here’s to the 1992 version of all of us—awkward glasses, floppy disks, and all. And here’s to everyone who’s still chasing that first spark of inspiration, whether it came from a dusty computer lab or a glowing screen at midnight. You never know what that one moment might become.
