I grew up around early technology and a family business, competed in Future Problem Solving, and started my first ecommerce company in ninth grade — when the web itself still felt new.
At 17, I talked my way into managing nine campus convenience stores because I was fascinated by inventory, POS systems, traffic patterns, and how the pieces moved together. Economics gave me a language for incentives and trade-offs. Later came the CEO seat, work inside a major hedge fund, and increasingly complex commerce and brand systems.
The tools changed. The question didn't: what is actually connected to what?
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Problem solvingFind the underlying problem, not just the visible one.
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Early ecommerceBuild while the technology is still changing underneath you.
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Economics + operating experienceUnderstand incentives, constraints, behavior, and trade-offs.
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TodaySame instinct, applied to much bigger systems.