I was born in Ireland. My father died when I was 11 years old, and we became poor. I began working at the age of 13, as a waiter in a cabaret lounge! I did every type of job, barman, bouncer, a year as a carpenter in Germany, a Math tutor, and even a runway model (short and humiliating career).
Eventually, I graduated from graduate school and began work at an IBM research center. At 28, I moved to the United States, worked on Wall Street, and later founded several algorithmic trading firms, which I sold sequentially to Goldman Sachs and Sequoia Capital. I retired in 2013 when I realized I didn’t need to worry about ever being poor again. I am married to Francesca, whom I met the night I arrived in the USA. We have two great kids and two even better grandkids. I take college courses at the local liberal arts school. I am fascinated with AI, history, and politics, and am incoherent in six languages.
I have a great life and have had an interesting and lucrative career. I would like to ascribe my success to my intelligence, my charm, my humility, and, of course, to my incredible good looks. But any success I have had is largely due to the support of my family, good friends, an affordable Irish educational system, and a huge amount of luck. I have eaten with the wealthy in private Manhattan restaurants and have worked in bars and construction sites, and I never saw a huge difference in intelligence or ability in the people I met in either world. But I did see the corrosive effects of poverty and the corrupting effect of excessive wealth.
I have always been committed to the fight for human rights. I took part in civil rights marches in Northern Ireland that usually ended in rubber bullets, and was involved in the Anti-Apartheid movement, which resonated with the Irish colonial experience. Right now, I am interested in strategic activism to counter the long-term campaign by the wealthy to hoard their wealth and power. In many ways, it is the same struggle.