Fresh out of school with a BA in Industrial Design, I went to work for GVO, one of the original Silicon Valley design firms in Palo Alto. At GVO, I often worked with "The G" (Dale Gruye) on product development programs where he provided the Industrial Design concepts and I would do all the rest: figuring out how it could be made, designing the piece parts, building the models and prototypes, interfacing with vendors, and finalizing the documentation.
Early on in my career, I discovered I had a special talent for working the area between Aesthetic Design and volume manufacturing. This hands-on specialty requires a great deal of vendor interaction, problem solving, and detail oriented management. I became known as the go-to guy for quick time to market products, the guy responsible for taking blue sky designs and turning them into real products. I've worked with tooling vendors, molders, metal stampers, fabricators and contract manufacturers across North America, Europe, and Asia. I'm a "roll up your sleeves and get it done" kind of guy.
After nearly 3 years at GVO, an opportunity to pursue my dream of residential construction lured me away. This next career phase was an attempt to redesign myself to become a designer/builder. After designing and building a large hillside home in Novato, I broke my arm one Christmas Day. The construction industry was tanking in a recessionary cycle so with my arm in a cast, I returned to GVO and was re-hired on the spot.
One of my favorite clients during my second stint at GVO was Osborne Computer Corp., one of the world's first mass produced portable computers. After completing the task of getting the OCC1 into production as a consultant, I was hired by Osborne to manage their product development programs. Working with a small internal staff and outside consultants, I developed 3 more generations of their portable computer before they ran out of cash and the company dissipated in bankruptcy.
Upon Osborne's demise, I partnered with one of my designer friends to launch Studio Red, an Industrial Design and Product Engineering firm. My business partner, Phil Bourgeois, and I had irreconcilable differences related to running a business and dissolved our partnership after a year. Fortunately, even though we were not destined to be business partners, we've maintained a strong friendship through the years.
Following the Studio Red year, I focused on product development engineering, working out of a home office. After a number of years enjoying the home office lifestyle and alternating between product design and residential construction, I was persuaded to return to the 9 to 5 world by my friends at GVO. While at GVO for the 3rd time, I took over management and business development of their prototype department, one of their 4 profit centers. I also was charged with the responsibility of managing their IT and software needs. Unfortunately, GVO didn't survive much past the retirement of the last of its founding partners. At the end, the prototype department, which I branded as 3D-I, handled an enormous amount of work and kept our 3 CNC millings machines and a staff of modelmakers in constant demand.
As GVO was imploding, I accepted a position with Hello Direct, a mail order marketer of telephone focused productivity tools. There, I worked on many of their headsets and other products, interfacing often with their Korean manufacturing partner, Seo Won K-Tec. It was during my stint at Hello Direct that I learned about an exciting new company, Handspring.
I joined Handspring as one of the initial ten professionals in the capacity of Manager of Industrial Design and Mechanical Engineering. My mandate was to work with our design consultants and manufacturing partners to bring Handspring's flagship product to market as quickly as possible. By utilizing a parallel rather than serial approach to the mechanical product development cycle, I was able to shave months off the time to market. In the early days, team members worked in a near borderless environment where anyone with minutes to spare was recruited to assist in other areas of business need.
I loved my years at Handspring, but all good things seem to come to an end. Such was the case for Handspring and as money dried up and the stock price plunged to less than 1% of it's market high, it seemed like time to move on.
An unsolicited and seemingly ridiculous offer (at the time) for our house in Los Altos Hills formed the catalyst for moving to Southern Oregon and giving retirement a try. I found "retirement" boring and soon I was involved in another venture, this time with me at the helm. In conjunction with a busines partner, we developed 6 acres into a subdivision of 31 lots and built 26 duplexes and 4 single family homes. We've turned this development into Horizon Village, a unique senior community of rental cottages and homes. The building of this business occupied a good chunk of my time for the next 6 years as we designed and built each of the homes, hired staff, and built a business grossing nearly $1,000,000 per year.
I enjoyed Southern Oregon very much, but that was not the case for my wife. We rationalized that California offered a better educational opportunity for our daughters as well as a better opportunity for career and happiness for My wife. In 2006. we sold the Oregon property and moved back to the Bay Area.
Since moving back to the Bay Area, my work has been focused primarily on residential construction with spashes of product design consulting here and there ... and focused on financially surviving the "Great Recession". In the past 5 years, I designed and built a new home in Woodside and an extensive remodel of a home in Redwood City. I also remodeled a large hillside house in Redwood City, I completed construction of a large river-front home in Sun River, Oregon, and have consulted here and there on other construction projects.
I have 2 career loves: Product Development and Architectural Construction. Throughout my career, I've alternated between these 2 loves as opportunity provides. Architectural design and construction is highly analogous to Product Development Engineering with the addition of a greater degree of design input and smaller production volumes. Building a house is an entire design effort combined with the detailed coordination and scheduling requirements of a product development cycle ... without the volume production component.
