ALEX COWAN

I’ve been starting and growing technology businesses for over 17 years. My first endeavor involved fixing broken computers in Santa Barbara, California, for a few dollars an hour. Even then, working as a computer mechanic, the need to couple what the technology could do with what people wanted stood out as a huge opportunity. Since then, I’ve worked with electrical engineers from Motorola and Sharp, software developers from Pixo⁷ and Symantec, product designers from IDEO and Tommy Hilfiger, advertising giants from Wieden & Kennedy, and bankers from Goldman Sachs. Speaking Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish gave me the opportunity to work with customers, engineers, and managers on six continents. As a contemporary of many of the dot-com pioneers at Stanford University in the late 1990s (and later in Silicon Valley), I experienced the full force of the dot-com period, its aftermath, and later its commercial evolution. I started Leonid Systems, in 2007, to help communications service providers (phone companies and cable companies) launch and scale next-generation services, like voice and video over IP (VoIP). Leonid currently works with some of the world’s largest service providers creating scalable technology systems to manage their operations.

I’ve always had one foot in the business world and the other in the technical world. Growing as a businessperson and an engineer gave me the perspective I’ve applied here, one that will help readers sort through the plethora of available technology to arrive at an effective implementation of their idea.

I’ve personally made every mistake this book cautions you to avoid. The good news is that they’re all avoidable, and this book will help you avoid mistakes and implement most of today’s high-tech best practices.
In short, this is the book I wish someone had handed me when I started.

⁷Apple used the Pixo OS in the first iPods.