The Espionage

Welcome to the Espionage. My name is Grant Alan Friedline. I am the President of Grant City Ventures Inc and the founder of the Spyshakers project. This is my first post on our re-designed blog. I admit, I didn’t really know what I was doing with the first blog. I think I can do better this time around. Where to start? Let’s start at the beginning!

I am an alumni of Saint Vincent College (2002) and University of Pittsburgh (2003). I studied Computer Science at Saint Vincent College. After graduation I had a very hard time getting a job. Job opportunities were few and far between in 2002 (right after nine eleven). My internships at Saint Vincent College were nothing impressive. I was in a world of hurt. In 2003 I went back for my Masters Degree at the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Science. I graduated from Pitt in one year. Pitt grad school gave me enough insight to consider starting my own company. I thought up a project for storing favorite websites online.

At the time my project was called Page Genius (I later found out that website was taken - not too bright in my young age haha). As I coded Page Genius I found similar websites popping up on the internet. This was disappointing and I put the project on the shelf for a while. I started working at Sony on the assembly line. It was the only (slightly) respectable job I could get.

Working on the assembly line was hard work. When I first got the job I would dance at my station. I finally had a job! But after time I got ran down. This was trial by fire. I worked in what they call “the dark room”. It is just that. Picture a trailer-like shelter built over top of the assembly line. Quality control tests are done inside. Thousands of televisions pass by me. I worked by myself. In the dark. On the graveyard shift. With no air conditioning and no chairs! It was not pleasant, but it was a job.

You have a lot of time to kill when you work a job like this. I dusted off Page Genius. It was my ticket out of here. What to do? I started taking notes. Lots of notes. In the dark. I did have a flashlight. Haha.

This is my suggestion to anyone who wants to start their own business. Get a zombie job. You need a zombie job in the very beginning. What am I talking about? You need a job where you can literally think about something else for eight hours on end. Your body is working. It is automated. Very robotic. Your mind is drifting off. Solving problems. You are planning something else. You are building a business while you earn a paycheck. This doesn’t work at all jobs. Choose wisely.

Back to Page Genius. I focused on passwords instead of favorite websites. Nobody out there could do password management the way I wanted. How do you store someone else’s password without knowing what it is? And give it back to them whenever they want? And prevent it from being stolen by spyware? And get it from any computer? And nooo I am not carrying a flash drive everywhere. I can barely remember my car keys!

These were major problems that took me months and months to solve. Maybe not solve, but at least provide a working solution. The answers came to me. The answers came to me in the darkness at Sony on the graveyard shift. I picked up my investor somewhere in there. You will find that during the business building stage you lose track of time. Not just by days. By years. It’s 2008 already? Where have I been!

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