CHAPTER 3This Book Saved My But
Before we continue, there are some things you should know about me. First, I'm not going to tell you that I'm a world-class expert on managing my but. I don't hold the Harold Kiester Chair of Two But Sciences at Harvard (though I have applied for the position).
No, I'm writing this book because I could fill a castle library with volumes on how I’ve failed to embrace my but. How I didn't find a way past a negative roadblock. How I spent years as a but-head, followed by more years ignoring all the buts.
I've been a product executive, a startup founder, and an emerging technology scout for most of my career. I was in AI before it could tell you convincingly that it was alive. I was building mobile apps before the iPhone could handle data and phone calls at the same time. And I once tried to convince one of the founders of Google to join our Internet research lab…while he was still in grad school. (He politely turned us down and later hired a fair number of our best people.)
I worked for IBM three times and was a startup CEO a couple times. I started a multinational consortium for joint R&D a few years back. And I've held the official title of “Seeker of Awesomeness,” not once but twice. One company put it in my employment contract, and IBM actually put it on my business cards.
Sometimes things worked out. Sometimes my thing didn't work out, but the thing my thing was about did. Sometimes things went in the drawer of failed experiments and are there ...