That grit—that Jacksonville survival instinct—became the fuel for LaunchPad.
The idea didn’t come to me in a flash of lightning; it grew out of the frustration of watching talented kids in my neighborhood fall through the cracks because they didn’t have a “safety net.” I saw brilliant artists who couldn’t afford brushes, and tech-savvy kids who were coding on library computers because their parents were working three jobs just to keep the Wi-Fi on.
I started LaunchPad in the corner of my bedroom, using a laptop I’d bought with three summers of lawn-mowing money and a modem that hissed like an angry cat. The concept was simple: if you were a creative with a dream and zero resources, LaunchPad was your bridge. We connected the “undiscovered” with mentors and micro-investors who believed that genius wasn’t a luxury reserved for the wealthy.
I worked until my eyes burned, fueled by the same “no-quit” energy I’d seen in my father since I was a toddler. I wasn’t just building a company; I was building a monument to his sacrifice. Every line of code, every pitch deck, every late-night networking call was a brick in a house I was building for the both of us. I wanted to give him a life where he didn’t have to smell like floor wax. I wanted to be the one who finally kept the lights on.
By the time I was twenty-one, the “little project” from the corner of a Jacksonville bedroom had become a national sensation. We were featured in magazines, interviewed on major podcasts, and suddenly, I was the “young visionary” everyone wanted to hear from. I was speaking at graduations, standing on stages under hot spotlights, wearing suits that cost more than my father’s truck.
