Steve S. Saroff

A few interconnected facts (with backstory links)

• I have dyslexia and have never been able to speeel consistently, and I sometimes stutter. This has been a gift. It has helped keep me from getting involved with pointless enterprises and tought me how to recoginize and avoide people who put others down. Here is more about that: my dyslexia.
• When I was 12 years old, I learned Morse code, got a ham radio license, and stayed awake many nights listening for distant call signs.
• I first left home when I was 14.
• Long obsessed with studying, reading, and mountain tops, at 14, I walked alone 500 miles in the Appalachians, then another 500 miles alone when I was 15, and still another 1000 miles alone when I was 16. I hitchhiked West when I was 17.
• When I was 19 years old, I spent 45 days walking alone in the Bob Marshall. That set the pace for everything that followed: I've never been intimidated by wilderness, solitude, or ambitious plans. I also appreciate the rewards that come from listening and shared stories, appreciating people in ways that someone who has been long alone can.
• I also write fiction and have published many short stories in what were once high-paying magazines (Redbook and others). My first nationally published story was sent "over the transom" and was selected out of a "slush pile" of 50,000 stories. I like emotional words and what they can do. I wrote a successful novel based on frauds and the criminals swirling about me during that time (some who died mysteriously, some who have died in prison, and others who should be in prison).
• Even though I left high school early, I received a college degree and then worked for two years as a faculty research engineer for the Oceanography department at Oregon State University. I spent a few months on a ship in the South Pacific. Other than those two jobs, all my technical jobs where I have worked for other people have sucked. Thus I started building my own companies.

Tech-Creator, Advisor, Writer, Musician, Friend

I started programming computers as a kid when that was less financially rewarding than fixing toasters. I started coding (Assembly, Pascal, Clipper, then C, SQL, HTML, PHP, Java, C++, etc) because I loved it. I have used dozens of computer languages on projects of all sizes to make myself and others money. In addition, I have been paid to design digital electronics, work in chemistry labs, work with explosives, publish fiction, perform music, do photography for books and magazines, and teach children.

I founded, built, grew, pitched, and sold two of my own start-ups to public corporations. RemoteScan had over 20,000 customers worldwide when it was acquired by WorldCom/Wamnet. RemoteScan was co-founded and owned 50/50 by my business partner and me and ran at 85% profit for years until the company was acquired by Quest/Dell Inc. for cash. This is what is supposed to happen with start-ups.

Before that, I founded FreeMail Inc, the first commercially successful web-based email system. FreeMail was used as Kinkos/FedEx’s worldwide Kinkonet system before being acquired just before the criminal fraud and collapse of WorldCom and Enron. I wrote a successful (3+ months on several Amazon-top-100 lists) novel about the criminals of that corrupt time: Paper Targets

Before starting companies, I had awful and great jobs. Unskilled and skilled. Laborer. Carpenter. Ranch Hand. Oil-field worker. Elementary school Science Teacher. Working for laser companies helping design new liquid-dye laser technologies. Explosives and electronic tech at United Technologies. Engineer in the Oceanography dept of Oregon State University, where I wrote software and invented and built electronic devices. Systems Analyst and Software Engineer at a large hospital chain, where I wrote much of the software used by several hospitals for more than a decade.

I've been a consultant for about 20 start-ups. And as its very 1st investor and as a dear friend and adviser to the founder, Michael Fitzgerald, I helped launch Submittable (the the online submission system now used by many publishers and grant organizations).

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