Hello,
My name is Rob Kelly and I love business!
I’m a 40-something year-old man originally from New York City who moved to San Francisco, California, USA 17 years ago on a dare from a then-girlfriend.
My aim with Purchase.com is to help quality businesses around the globe better grow, profit and organize.
My experience? Well, you may have more than me.
I describe myself as a mile wide and an inch deep in business. Some things I’ve experienced include:
- Buying a company (Automatrix/Musi-Cal)
- Funding two companies (Mojam and ExpressDoctors)
- Selling a company (Mojam to Wolfgang’s Vault)
- Selling a top value domain name (I sold Calendar.com to Mail.com)
- Leading a business to failure (ExpressDoctors)
- Partnering with major companies (Microsoft, Yahoo, Sprint, Walt Disney Company, NBC and many more)
- Being deposed in a lawsuit (we settled)
- Being threatened with a lawsuit by one of the largest newspaper companies (I won)
- Meeting one-on-one with business leaders such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve Case, Scott McNealy, Steve Ballmer and other super-bright, low-key people you’ve probably never heard of (but should!).
A Child on Wall Street
My father is my hero — he introduced me to business at a very young age and taught me to love it.
Dad shared with me the philosophy of”value investing” that he learned from Ben Graham, the Columbia University teacher who taught Warren Buffett the same approach (check out my favorite Warren Buffett quotes as well as quotes from Charlie Munger (Warren’s partner).
Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are among my new heroes.
I went to my first shareholder meeting (which included a board meeting) when I was 16 years old (it was for the high-end stereo/amplifier maker McIntosh Labs) — I think my dad was just trying to poke fun at the small company’s management team.
Little did I know that McIntosh made the amplifiers for what would become one of my favorite bands: The Grateful Dead.
As a kid, I worked for Dad every chance I could…weekends, vacations, you name it. He bought me a navy Brooks Brothers suit and I faithfully wore it every day as I accompanied him to his startup (investing in undervalued securities for friends and family).
While I was in the middle of University in 1987, considering my full-time career, the stock market crashed, and my Dad’s partner John “Wall Street” Walsh gave me some sage advice: “Wall Street will always be here kid…now’s a good time for you to explore some other career options.”
So I walked into the University Career Center and asked about part-time jobs (as an alternative to working with my Dad) — they offered two: 1) A job cleaning up a retail store and 1) A position as research assistant at a high-tech consulting company called New Science Associates (I chose the latter).
Falling in Love With The Technology Business
New Science was an amazing place where a handful of super-smart guys (including Jerry Michalski) were consulting Fortune 500 companies on the latest in technology. I got to help work on tech projects with AMEX, McDonalds and many others. New Science was later sold to Gartner Group.
From there I joined Digital Information Group which published two weekly newsletters: the Software Industry Bulletin (for software executives) and Information Industry Bulletin (for publishers of information (whether it be online, textbooks, encyclopedias, CD-Roms). I learned a ton from the husband-wife team of Jeff Silverstein and Maureen Fleming.
Next I joined CMP Media, a publisher of magazines and conferences, as an Associate Editor for Information Week, the leading magazine for chief information officers. My job was to hunt down good news stories on the tech industry and that’s how I ended up getting to meet and interview Bill Gates numerous times (including one time when he didn’t expect me!).
InformationWeek was an amazing position and I started to love the business people I wrote about so much that I wanted to become one.
…
[At this point, Rob is taking a coffee break and will resume writing the rest of his bio...]
Please check out my full background at LinkedIn or contact me on Twitter
I hope you find value here.
Thanks for visiting,
Rob
Disclaimer: I will mention books that I believe in on this Blog, and include links for you to buy the book on Amazon. I will also include links to fun things like t-shirts or hats or mugs if appropriate.
If you click on links to Amazon or other sellers from this Web site, I may get a commission (Amazon pays 4% to 8.5% of the purchase price of products that are sold as a result of a visit from this site as part of the Amazon Associates program (which you can apply to for your Web site!).
A company named Zazzle enables me to sell t-shirts and merchandise and they pay 15% commissions through their Zazzle Associates program
These commerce relationships help me offset the costs of the free information I provide you. I commit to you that I will never promote a book or product or service unles my colleagues, friends or I believe in it.
