Entrepreneurship in His DNA

Entrepreneurship runs in your family’s background. Tell us about their business background, and how has that inspired your entrepreneurship dreams? It seems to run in the genes.

Yeah, it kind of does. I’m fourth generation. I’ve heard about my great grandfather, his businesses, but then my parents and grandparents, they had multiple businesses in my lifetime, and I got to watch them grow. And I got to see the passion that they put into it, the love they had for their customers, their employees, the energy they had for the solutions they were building. And I have to say, as a kid, I thought it was interesting, but I also was somewhat intimidated by it. So, it wasn’t something when I was a kid that I said, you know, I’m going be an entrepreneur, but it was only when I got away from it and I was like, “God, I think they were having more fun than I was having at the bigger companies,” and that itch kind of came back and I ended up scratching it with the first company, Pay Cycle.

But all the businesses that I remember growing up in since the 60s were financial service companies. So not too different than what I do today. They were selling general ledger, and accounting, and payroll solutions to SMBs and accountants much the same way that we do today. Back then, though, it was punch cards. The night that I was born, my mom was sorting punch cards, 50 pounds trays of punch cards for a payroll job, the largest defense contractor in DC. So, like you said, it’s kind of in the genes, born into it, so to speak.