Steve S. Saroff

I will consider being part of interesting and fulfilling projects, helping plan, start, and market companies or great products. I can help gently fix what is broken in an existing project while helping people avoid costly mistakes. If the younger me had chanced into and talked with someone like the person I am now, decades of struggle would have been skipped. I have also been on several boards and understand how to grow ideas through teamwork. Consider contacting me.

I started programming computers as a kid when it was less financially rewarding than fixing lawnmowers. I started coding (Assembly, then Pascal, dBase, Clipper, then C, SQL, HTML, PHP, Java, etc. etc. etc.) because I loved it. I have used dozens of computer languages to make money. I have also been paid for designing and building digital electronics, working in chemistry labs, writing fiction, performing music, doing photography for books and magazines, and teaching.

I successfully pitched and sold two of my own start-ups, both of which I co-founded, to public corporations. RemoteScan had over 20,000 corporate customers worldwide when it was acquired. RemoteScan was co-founded and owned 50/50 by my business partner and me, and ran at 85% profit for years until the company was acquired by Quest/Dell Inc. This is what is supposed to happen with start-ups. Before that, I founded and was a 50/50 partner of FreeMail Inc, the first commercially successful web-based email system. FreeMail was used as Kinkos/FedEx’s worldwide Kinkonet system before being acquired just before the criminal fraud and collapse of WorldCom and Enron, by WAM!NET/WorldCom. I wrote a successful novel about the criminals that were swirling about me during that time: Paper Targets. All the technical parts of Paper Targets are true... I am an author of a patent on the most unique part of FreeMail - its self-cloning ability (FreeMail functioned and propagated as a benevolent virus).

Before starting my own companies, I had many jobs, both unskilled and skilled. Laborer. Carpenter. Ranch Hand. Oil-field worker. Elementary school Science Teacher at Sussex School in Missoula. Working for laser companies helping design new liquid-dye laser technologies. Engineer in the Oceanography dept of Oregon State University, where I wrote software and invented and built electronic devices. Systems Analyst and Software Engineer at St. Pat's Hospital in Missoula, where I wrote much of the software used by several large hospitals for more than a decade. I also worked as a consultant for about 20 start-ups. And as its very 1st investor and as a dear friend and adviser to the founder, Michael Fitzgerald, I helped launch Submittable (the the online submission system now used by many publishers and grant organizations).

Also, I recently coded and deployed a successful algorithmic, real-time, HFT system, which I wrote from scratch, (for the love of the real-world math and the fantastic challenge) developed using TradeStation's OOEL Language.

Some interconnected points (with a few links of back story)

• I have dyslexia and have never been able to speeel consistently, and I sometimes stutter. This has been a gift. It has helped keep me from getting involved with pointless enterprises. Here is more about that: my dyslexia.
• When I was 12 years old, I learned Morse code, got a ham radio license, and stayed awake many nights listening for distant call signs.
• I first left home when I was 14.
• Long obsessed with studying, reading, and mountain tops, at 14, I walked alone 500 miles in the Appalachians, then another 500 miles alone when I was 15, and still another 1000 miles alone when I was 16. I hitchhiked West when I was 17.
• When I was 19 years old, I spent 45 days walking alone in the Bob Marshall. That set the pace for everything that followed: I've never been intimidated by wilderness, solitude, or ambitious plans. I also appreciate the rewards that come from listening and shared stories, appreciating people in ways that someone who has been long alone can.
• I also write fiction and have published many short stories in what were once high-paying magazines (Redbook and others). My first nationally published story was sent "over the transom" and was selected out of a "slush pile" of 50,000 stories. I like emotional words and what they can do. I also wrote a successful novel based loosely on the WorldCom and Enron frauds and the criminals swirling about me during that time (some who have died in prison, and others who should be in prison).
• Even though I left high school early, I received a college degree and then worked for two years as a faculty research engineer for the Oceanography department at Oregon State University. I spent a few months on a ship in the South Pacific. Other than those two jobs, all my technical jobs where I have worked for other people have sucked. Thus I started building my own companies.

photo by @hiSuzanne