My parents owned a plants nursery. We all grew up growing things and planting things and selling things, and I also managed landscape crews.

When I got into college, I found what ultimately became my life's work. I couldn't sleep at night, I was so excited about it. So I'm attracted to people who play at that level. They actually want to play in their professional life.

We shifted our philosophy from being a computer mapping group that would support planners to the idea of building actual software that would be well engineered. Because at that time, our software was not well-engineered at all; it was basically built with project funding and for project work, largely by ourselves.

There is the GIS world that is largely managing authoritative data sources, supporting geocentric workflows like fixing roads, making cities more livable through better planning, environmental management, forest management, drilling in the right location for oil, managing assets and utilities.

Red Interactive, the digital advertising agency, is a real, systemic kind of business, as opposed to a one-off thing. We can help advertisers frustrated by old media find clients they can work with.

We wanted to harness the power of technology to make it possible for anyone to sell tickets to any type of event.

There's no better place in the world for technology start-ups than Silicon Valley; there's such an incredible well of talent and capital and resources. The whole system is set up to foster the creation of new companies.

I can remember when there were storylines with gay characters on shows like 'Family' and 'Dynasty' and thinking, I have something in common with that person. This was way before the Internet and all the visibility that has brought with it.