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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/282
MacDirectory 157
INTERVIEW
important and when I returned to my
office she was gone, but had left me a
message saying, "If you ever decide you
don't want to work here any more we
would love to work with you but we think
it is terrible for you to have to work with a
guy like this." This was someone I had
known for a very long time. My agency
manager called me into his office and he
said, "I think your priorities are all messed
up, your family is more important to you
than your job, and I need you to take a
day off and think about this. I have to
have you 100 percent or I don't want you
here any more."
I went home and called those people up
and said, "Is this for real?" They said,
"Absolutely." My father said, "What's the
matter?" I told him the story and he said,
"You know what, I'm self-employed, my
brother is self-employed, and if you have
never thought about it, and if you don't
do it, you will regret it for the rest of your
life." I went in the next day and told [my
boss] that I had thought about it and he
was right....so I quit, and then I went out
on my own as a independent software
developer using Helix.
I had a good career going and I made a
lot of money. At one point I had a lot of
applications that seemed like they could
be successful as vertical market
applications. I figured I needed help and
added a salesperson but that didn't work
out. By 1991 Mac was in deep trouble
because of Windows and Helix went under
in February of 1992 and was broken up
into two companies. The second owner of
Helix took a company with 125 workers
and decimated it and within two or three
years it was just him, his sister and one
tech support guy and a huge user base
that never got their phone calls answered,
and it was just a mess. Then, along came
a third guy, the Chip Maker, and he
decided to find some folks who had been
not been associated with the original and
he found me and a couple others. Sadly,
he was a poor money manager and in
2002 he money-managed himself out of
business and we bought the company out
of bankruptcy court and here we are.
MD >
So where is Helix now?
GN > Helix is a virtual company living in
cyberspace. Matt and I and one other guy
who chooses to remain anonymous own
the company. We run it online basically. I
work out of my home. Matt works out of
his home and we have seven or eight
engineers that we employ all over the
world. On Monday, we have a regular 3
p.m. development conference on iChat
and we are a very lean organization and
very efficient. We are cranking out the
new OS X version that no one else could
do or wanted to do over the years and
now we are almost done.
MD >
Do you have the product stable in a
large database now?
GN > Six of seven products are all done in
OS X. We have one left. We'll probably get
back to work on that one in about three
to five weeks after we polish off some
issues in one we just finished.
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Since this interview, Gil is currently
working on new ventures and expanding
on his life as an entrepreneur. You can
expect to see more new projects coming
from QSA ToolWorks and a new company
just formed.
You can find Helix at