I am going to have to try and do a relatively quick blog post this week as my day is pretty hectic as it is build day.  I mentioned in my first blog that I would try and go back in time and tell some stories about how we got here today.  For this week’s blog I thought I might tell the story about how we met John Henry and how the seed was planted to start this company.  I am going to stick with our initial meeting for now and document further down the road how this company was started.

I think the best place to start this story is by bringing up a book you should read if you are a baseball fan.  The book is called Feeding the Monster and it is written by a guy named Seth Mnookin.  This book goes into great detail about how John and his ownership group were able to acquire the Boston Red Sox and start a run of playoff success that life long Sox fans like myself could never have believed would happen.  The reason I bring this book up is because it documents a sequence of events that transpired in the bidding process for the Sox which ultimately led to John owning the team when it appeared very unlikely he would.  I really don’t have much doubt that if these events had played out differently iRacing would not exist.

So the story begins with us at Papyrus working diligently on NASCAR Racing 2003 Season.  The date is September 25^th, 2002.  I get a call from the front desk that there is someone on the phone that has questions about setting up a server for NR 2002 and, oh, by the way, he is the IT guy for John Henry.  As I mention in the previous paragraph I am a life long Sox fan having lived in Massachusetts for almost my entire life, so needless to say I was pretty excited to help out.  I talked with Jon (his IT guy) for about an hour and gave him all the information he needed to get a server running for John.  At the end of the conversation I threw it out there that we were basically right down the street (really, about half an hour) from Fenway and if he ever had any interest in seeing what we do to give me a ring.  I really did not think anything more would come of it and went out to lunch for about an hour.  When I got back to my desk after lunch, much to my surprise, I had a voicemail waiting for me from John saying he would be out the next morning.

Thursday morning September 26^th arrives and I have pretty much not slept because I am so excited about our guest for the day.  Pretty much everyone is the office is excited, except maybe Grant, who is never excited about anything.  John arrives mid-morning and we start our tour through the studio.  I have given many office tours in my time here at iRacing and at Papyrus and nobody has ever taken the time and asked as many questions as John did that day.  He made a point to talk to every single person in the studio to find out about them and what they did for the company.  What was really amazing to watch during the day was that John became more and more excited about the product and company as the day went on.  The tour ended at a cubicle we had setup with a computer running a Matrox video card that could output the cockpit on three screens.  John sat there and drove on the system for close to an hour.  It’s a pretty gratifying experience to watch someone who could be doing anything else in the world at that moment thoroughly enjoying something you helped create.  After literally spending 6 hours with us that day, John left with the promise that he would be in touch because he wanted to help with beta testing NR2003.  As it turns out, John was one of the most active participants in testing going forward and was instrumental in developing a lot of the aids that allowed new comers to get up to speed with the software for NR2003.

A few years ago I was talking with John about his visit.  He told me that he gets many invitations like mine and he rarely accepts, but something told him to visit Papyrus that day.  I know that personally it was probably one of the most significant days in my life, ranking right behind my wedding and just recently finding out I am going to be a dad.  I consider myself to be pretty lucky in that I have gotten to do my dream job now for almost a decade because of John and Dave, and one could argue that I need to thank Charles Dolan as well.

Steve