In this episode of the Founder Origins Stories, Sherry interviews Rob. They talk about his early experiences coding on the Apple IIe, selling candy, and the role his dad had on his life.

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Episode Transcript

Sherry Walling:

Today wraps us this round of the Founder Origin Story series. We do have this on the roadmap to do again next summer, so if you have a founder in mind that you absolutely want to hear from, you wanna hear about his or her background, where they came from, how they grew up, how they were shaped then please send us an email, Tweet at us, get in touch with us somehow and submit their name and we’d love to get them on the deck for the next round.

But we’re ending the series today with Rob’s origin story. So we talk about some things that I don’t think we’ve actually talked about on the podcast anywhere else or that he hasn’t talked about that publicly. His early experiences of learning to code on an Apple 2E, his early experiences writing comics, inventing things and being an entrepreneur selling candy at school, selling other things. And we also talk in this interview about the central role that his dad played in both helping him learn how to cope with hard things, to face anxiety, but also in terms of building up his belief in himself and his own ability to contribute meaningfully to the world.

So it’s a good interview. There’s a little bit of crying but it’s mostly by me. So thanks for listening to the series, and we have a lot of things coming up this fall. Love to see any of you join us for Business of Software in Boston in September, Robert and I’ll both be at MicroConf Europe in Lisbon in November, and we’re doing a lot of other traveling and speaking. We’re hosting a retreat, hosting some zen tribe groups, so all of that of course is available on the Zen Founder website and feel free to be in touch with us if you are listening to the podcast and you realize there’s something that we might be able to do to help bring a little bit more zen to you or to your business. You know how to get ahold of us.

Sherry Walling:

It’s a little bit funny to interview you about this since I know a lot about your life story, but I think it’s a really interesting story and it’ll good for the listeners to hear this part of you, which I don’t know that you’ve shared a lot publicly.

Rob Walling:

Yeah, I haven’t really had the chance. I think a lot of folks that you’ve interviewed for this series, there hasn’t really been a venue to talk about growing up because typically we start with … There’s often the question of “Were you an entrepreneur when you were a kid?” and then that’s it and then it moves it on. It’s like okay, so take us to when you started the business and we kind of skip through that, so I really haven’t gotten in depth about growing up and what my formative years look like.

Sherry Walling:

I think it is important to have that time to talk about the development of the founder and not just the development of the business, so I’m glad we’re doing this. So let’s maybe start from the beginning. Where were you born? Where did you grow up?

Rob Walling:

I was born in Santa Clara, California. I grew up basically in the South Bay and then in the East Bay area, so what’s interesting is that I didn’t realize growing up that the bay area was different then the rest of the world, and so seeing billboards for computer chips and manufacturers i