I am the 1%, or least should be included in it.
How does one become part of the 1% you ask? I promise to keep it relatively short, but here is how I am living the American dream.
I certainly did not grow up poor, but I was not rich by any means. My parents both worked, and I ate when I needed to eat, and always had a roof and heat. I am not sure if that made me middle class, but I sure felt like it did as many around me did not have what I did. My mother has now retired from her job as a welfare agent (in I believe, though am not sure, the poorest county in Pennsylvania), and my father has retired from his job as a custodian at a high school for troubled youth (and although this facility is privately owned, they make all of their money from government entities).
I grew up in the typical rural republican household.
I went to public school and graduated 3rd in my class (there were only 50 students) and felt almost prepared enough to go to college. My high school received federal aid as it was in a depressed community. This aid allowed us to get great young teachers that could work there for a little while and get assistance for their school loans. I was lucky enough to get sufficient federal aid and federally backed school loans to allow me to attend a small private liberal arts college. I decided that wasn’t enough education, so went to graduate school at a public land grant university in the Midwest. The majority of the research we did there was funded by DoD or DoE.
My last year of graduate school I learned that the Army was interested in having one of the units that I designed and suggested I look into finding a company that could produce the unit. I decided that it may be better to just start a company and do it myself. The university offered a “mini-MBA” program for scientists and engineers with the intent of providing enough information to better function in the corporate world (a program that I think should be offered at more institutions). I teamed with another graduate student and wrote a business plan (and won 5 business plan competitions, back when they still existed). We decided that we were ready and able to actually start the business. (Thinking back on this always makes me laugh.)
Then September 11th happened.
Although we did find some small level of investment, the investment community pretty much dried up. We decided to continue and tried to find other avenues of financing. Being a graduate student in the sciences, I was reasonably able to write a good proposal, so naively (I write this because the success rate is relatively low) wrote a proposal to the Army through the SBIR (Small Business Innovation and Research) program. SBIR is a congressionally mandated program for small businesses designed to fund research that may be too risky for private industry to fund. We won the award for something like $75k. That investment was likely one of the best the government has ever made. We went on to win additional SBIR awards from the Navy, Marines, DoE, and NSF, and won a Tibbetts Award (recognition for successful commercialization in the SBIR program). (The SBIR program is now at risk…)
We recognized that we needed to grow the company but needed greater investment than we were able to find, so we merged with about a dozen other companies about our same size that all worked with complementary technologies (and almost all had won an SBIR award). We “went public” in 2007 …at about the worst time we possibly could have…
We did get enough money to grow to about 700 people though (55 of which were at the location that I founded). 60% of our sales were to some form of government, and continues to be. Our stock was cheap enough however, that we were acquired by a large defense contractor. (As an aside, when they took over we quickly had to lay off about 10% of the staff.)
…The only thing that would have made my life easier was lower taxes and less government…
Snark aside, I cannot believe that it is not abundantly obvious that almost all hi-tech small businesses have had some sort of significant government funding. Without that funding there is no other path to success (at least there was not for us) as large companies will absolutely not fund this type of research and investors require a return on investment that is shorter than the development cycle.
I stand with the 99%.
If you have made it this far, I must ask, why? And apologize for poor grammar and my rambling writing style. Thanks for reading.
1:59 PM PT: As is required... thanks for pushing me to the recommended list. I feel truly honored when I really figured that I would get three comments and head home for the evening happy. Now I am grinning from ear to ear.
Looks like I need to write more often, I've got the bug now.