Mr. Galloway grew up in Los Angeles to immigrant mother and father. His father, a captivating gross sales government raised in Despair-era Scotland, had a “horrible relationship with cash,” he stated. His mother and father divorced when he was 9, and he lived together with his mom, who labored as a secretary.
“It was an unlimited supply of stress that we didn’t have cash,” he stated. “It was additionally very emasculating.” Mr. Galloway turned obsessive about cash, and purchased his first inventory (Columbia Footage) as an eighth grader. He wasn’t fashionable. “I seemed like Ichabod Crane with dangerous pores and skin,” he stated. In highschool, he ran for sophistication president three years in a row, and misplaced every time. He additionally developed physique dysmorphia, he stated.
He went to varsity at U.C.L.A. and described his time there, in a not-entirely-convincing tone of remorse, as a “missed alternative to be accountable.” He joined a fraternity, rowed crew and gained 20 kilos of muscle. “Fairly frankly, my life modified,” he stated. “Rapidly girls have been very eager about me.”
Throughout enterprise college on the College of California, Berkeley, he and a classmate began a agency known as Prophet Model Technique, advising firms on how one can construct their manufacturers. This being the early Nineteen Nineties, their recommendation usually amounted to: Use the web. They attracted huge shoppers, together with Williams-Sonoma, Levi Strauss and Apple. Within the dot-com growth, they began a sequence of firms, together with an e-commerce website known as RedEnvelope, the place individuals may purchase and ship last-minute items.
RedEnvelope received an inflow of money from enterprise capital companies, together with Sequoia Capital, however Mr. Galloway thought the brand new financiers have been steering the corporate in a horrible course. His battle to exchange the board failed, however did entice the eye of hedge funds. “They stated, ‘We just like the reduce of your loopy jib,’” he stated.
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