Starting a company at 17 from a basement.

In the mid-1990s, the internet was still a novelty to most people. Dial-up connections. GeoCities pages. AOL keywords. But if you were paying attention, really paying attention, you could see something massive was about to happen.

I was 16, and I was paying attention.

College wasn't the path I was going to take. Not because I couldn't learn, but because the traditional path didn't feel right for the moment I was already living in. I was on my own earlier than most people expect, and I was ready. I was already spending every waking hour in front of a screen, teaching myself HTML, experimenting with VRML, learning Adobe tools by trial and error, building computers from parts, and standing up hosting environments on Netscape servers. The technology was new enough that the definition of an expert was evolving every day. Everyone was figuring it out in real time. That gave me an opportunity.

A basement in the Berkshires became the headquarters. A fractional T1 line, which at the time felt like owning a rocket ship, became the infrastructure. And the local municipality became the first real client. They didn't care that I was 17. They cared that I could solve their problem. They had seen what we were doing with the T1 line, how we were standing up servers, how we were pushing the technology. They could see through that experience that we had something, and they gave us an opportunity.

Nobody asked for my resume. Nobody asked for my degree. They asked if I could build the thing. I said yes and figured it out. That's been an operating principle ever since.

What the early days taught me

Building a company before you can legally sign a contract teaches you things no MBA program covers. It teaches you resourcefulness, because when you have no budget you learn to solve problems through creativity instead of money. It teaches you urgency, because when every project is the difference between eating and not eating you don't waste time on theory.

But the most important lesson from those early years was about people. Not about basements. Not about solo operations. It was about the friends and collaborators who showed up, who saw what we were building and wanted to be part of it.

Every milestone that followed came from a relationship:

• The first real client came through a word-of-mouth referral from someone who believed in me before I'd proven anything.
• The first employee was a friend who traded security for the chance to build something new.
• The first major brand partnership came from a connection who vouched for us in a room we'd never have entered alone.
• Every year of growth compounded on relationships built the year before.

Getfused started as a kid with a computer and an unreasonable amount of belief. Thirty years later, it's a full-service creative marketing agency that has served some of the most recognizable brands in sports, hospitality, and entertainment. The technology has changed completely. The tools are unrecognizable. The principle hasn't changed at all. Solve problems. Build relationships. Never stop learning.

One last thing worth naming. The ability to see an opportunity when it appeared, to figure things out from scratch, to keep going when the path wasn't obvious. Those aren't things I invented at 17. They were shaped long before, at home. My parents gave me the skills that made all of it possible, whether I understood that at the time or not.

That basement taught me you don't need permission to start. You don't need a credential to create value. You need the willingness to figure it out and the humility to ask for help when you can't. Everything else follows.