“Whats your name?”

Computers, more computers and a name. So I want to jump ahead to the juicy details since no one really cares about the day to day stuff that has happened. Personally, there are many days that I would love to forget, but they have been burned into my memory. It was really a great experience not being a programmer, the only help that I could provide was running food and handing over my credit card. I can tell you that I did become a member of the Oprah Book Club while development continued.

New Years Eve 2006, I am hanging with my friends and my telephone rings and its Gavin. “Hello” i say, the reply was “We are done, we need servers.” But, But its 2AM I cant go buy servers now. Is there a 24/7 drive thru server store that I am not aware of? Now the excitement builds, I believe that we buy some servers and we are ready to launch “???????” but it doesn’t even have a name.

Now after 3 years, i am still sitting on the couch and don’t talk to me today cause its book day, but at the commercial I realize that Gav has busted his butt and needs a break before he breaks. I look over and say hey Gav wanna go to New York for a break. After all I am the Venture Capital so i can actually take a mental health trip and have to explain this trip to anyone. My bff Debbie (Mistress Debbie to you), had made the arrangements for us since it was 4:30pm and we had to get to the airport if we were going to be flying out that evening. The flight was great, now we are at JFK and I come to the bright idea we can take the subway into the city. Oh crap did i mention that it was now late January and Gavin didn’t own a winter coat. So we exit the Subway in the city and i begin to walk to the hotel now Gavin is freezing as we walk. As we pass each block I say “we are almost there” i figured it was three blocks from the subway so we really didn’t need a cab. To this day he still calls me cheap for not getting a cab.

We finally get to the hotel and I was like “Wow this this place looks like a crime scene.” But we are men so we check in, and go to our rooms. The night is pretty uneventful no gun shots or anything, but I think the heat is broken, can it possibly get any hotter in here. The next morning Gavin calls me and is ready to get going, I desperately needed a cup of coffee so we planned to meet in an hour. As I am coming back from the corner store with a cup of coffee in my hands i was thinking we need to find a new hotel. Now I am not a religious person at all but what happened next was a sign from somewhere. Getting into the elevator, I notice that there are other people in the elevator, “7 please” I look at my elevator mates and realize that I am looking at Detective Briscoe and Green from Law and Order. This cant be true, wow this place really is a crime scene. I call Gav’s room and say “pack we gotta go somewhere else.”

Walking the streets of New York we walk past Sony Style, I had learned that a programmer couldn’t pass up a computer store, just like my mother couldn’t pass a shoe store so we enter. Walking around Sony Style with our bags and my dog (Paris but to her friends her name is Boniva). Gavin is figuring out what laptop he wanted next, so he says to me “what do you think of this Vaio” I turn and see him ghost white pale looking at me like a deer in the headlights. “Gav WTF” one word came out of his mouth “Xivio” ok now he is speaking to me in a foreign tongues can it get worse. “I want to call it Xivio” he says to me and now we are one step closer to an actual lauch after all we just named our project.

Adoption and Xivio

Adoption? I know what your thinking what does this have to do with Xivio. Well looking back at it now seems like the best way to describe the events that took place. Ok, Who did you adopt and where is this going? So the kid (aka Gavin Conrad) who I met in Starbucks and decided to invest my savings tells me that he is looking for a new place to live. Being recently single think wth I have the room, and what a way to protect my investment then to open my door to this stranger and let him move in. So the plans are made hes gonna move in and will work out of the house. Pretty cool this way I can keep an eye on whats going with this Virtual World. Now lets go back to almost the beginning, when I mentioned that I was interested in investing in this project no money ever changed hands he never asked for dollar. So here I am, Owner in this company with an initial investment of $0.00 how cool right. Wrong, so now Gavin’s in the house and he is working non-stop on what I am not really sure. My rent cost didn’t go up and electricity maybe went up 15 bucks with the new addition.

Now lets talk about food, now let me give you a guesstimate of what I adopted. Gavin is probably 5’9″ and maybe 100 pounds (yup thin kid so I figure he doesn’t eat) yeah right. Day 1 not in the house for more than an hour he walks up to me and looks at me stands there for a minute and then says “I’m hungry” turns and goes back to his computer to continue programming. Ok that was kinda odd but being a single guy the only thing in my fridge at the time is yoohoo, Mayo, Guinness, and left overs from the god knows when. I know that I am running for food. “Hey what do you want to eat I will go get it!” he looks at me and says “Mc Donalds” pretty cool I think cause there is a Mc Donalds right up the street I could walk there if I really wanted to. “What do you want from Mc Donalds?” I ask what from Mc Donalds Ok I am gonna warn you now what came next was amazing “10 double cheeseburgers (no ketchup and mustard) 20 nuggests (no sauce) and a large diet coke.” Hes screwing with me I am thinking, all I can say is really? So I jump into the car cause now this is a big bag of food. I go to the drive thru, place the order and go home. I take the bags of food and put it down (step back and wonder where all this food is gonna go). Here he goes, opens the bag pulls out a double cheeseburger takes the bread off and eats the burger only. Following this method of eating, somewhere into the 4th burger he informed me that it was the “carbs” that make you fat not the fat. I guess everyone is a little different and me being a fatty I regretted eating pasta the night before. I walk away and come back in about 5 min to find 10 empty burger wrappers, 2 empty boxes where the nuggets were. Wow this kid can eat is all I can think of. So now I settle into my daily routine and he comes up to me and says he needs more diet coke. Back into the car to get a 12 pack and since I didn’t drink soda I figured that a 12 pack would last a while. Yea right that 12 pack was gone within 8 hours. But Gavin didn’t leave that desk (except for a bathroom break) for 18 hours, all he did was program and program.

“Captains Log… Stardate 3 years and 2 months later” I turn my head and see Gavin sitting at his desk programming as usual. Surrender by what must be no less that 10 empty diet coke cans. Looking back at this strange convoluted ride I realize that somewhere along the way I lost a business partner and gained a best friend. Well I could go on and on about the dynmanic between the two of us but he just came over and said “Dave… I’m hungry and we are out of soda.” Off to Publix I go.

I can’t even get a cup of coffee without talking

Ok, so I am sitting at a Starbucks in sunny South Florida trying to enjoy my triple grande sugar free vanilla soy latte. I cannot believe I just typed that since I never order it right when I am in line, must be performance anxiety. After I doctor it up with 10 Splenda I look for a place to sit down and enjoy this science experiment before I have to meet my friends to go fishing. Now it is 7:00 A.M and the boat leaves at 7:15 but like most people I need my coffee before I can face the world and most of all my fishing friends.

So, I see this guy sitting at a table with these strange white wires going to his ears. Now its early in the morning and I am just not right so I walk up and say “Hey…What is that thing?” He looks up from his Mac laptop and gives me the strangest look. “What you don’t know what an Ipod is?” he says to me. So I turned around and said “Of course I have seen one!” thinking nice cover. Now I look like a fool and usually I am pretty good at that so I go with the next statement “I didn’t know people used Macs anymore” I figured how much worse could this morning get. If i knew then what I know now (Cheesy Cliche’) I would have never added up this equation. Now thinking that I am a pretty advanced person (I had a LCD screen in my car stereo) how could I have missed these cool looking things. Now its like airplane anxiety you want to say something but you don’t wanna annoy the person next to you but like in school if you don’t ask the question you don’t learn. “Hey that laptop is cool can I take a look at it? “sure” he says to me.

Looking back at the whole thing now, I am wearing my lucky fishing shirt and a pair of old shorts basically looking homeless. So he turned the computer to me and I’m looking at the screen and all I see are these letters and characters in an arrangement that I didn’t understand. Now the cell is ringing cause of course, I am late, but I have to figure this whole thing out. Now I see this thing called Flash and this weird language and once again since curiosity’s killed the cat already I kept with the questions after all I was already bothering him.

“What you doin?” I asked. He looks at me and says “I am building a Virtual World!” like I should know what that is. A virtual world..? Ok, now I just had the “hat trick” (ipod, Mac G4 and virtual world). So he proceeds to show what what a virtual world is, ’cause after all I am a short fat bald guy who thought he was pretty up with the times. Boy was I wrong. So I am looking at this so called virtual world, thinking people do this with their spare time yea right but I have been wrong all morning so it was time for me to get a lesson on all the things I thought I knew. I pick up the cell phone and call my friends to cancel this fishing trip ’cause I was learning what the “real people” used computers for. I always thought it was for news, stocks, and those movies that everyone has seen but never admits to.

Now I am amazed at how this so called virtual world looks and even more amazed at the “kid” that made it. I go for a refill and offer one to my new teacher. We must have talked for another 45 minutes. Being polite I say to him “I would love to see how it turns out keep me posted” and we exchanged numbers. Ok so now for the worst part, I took his number threw it on the floor of the car and went for some breakfast after all who calls so stranger from Starbucks that you just met. After breakfast I drive my butt over to the mall cause now I need an Ipod and a new Mac computer cause they were the “in thing.” Now I feel like a real man I have the toys and a little knowledge of the cyber world I go back to the Starbucks cause after all I have a $24 dollar a day habit. I see the same guy sitting there and I had to walk over and show off my new toys. Next thing I know not only did I have some cool new toys but I was the owner of a virtual world in the making. My mom always told me not to talk to strangers and for once I can honestly say she was wrong. Who would have thought that a cup of coffee would have turned into a new career. Funny how things happen. That’s my Xivio startup story so far.