Marin Magazine - June 2018

reetings Principal Farr, faculty, administration, board members, grandparents, parents, siblings … dogs … dog walkers, dog groomers, dog orthopedists, dog psychologists, dog open space lobbyists, dog CrossFit instructors and, of course, class of 2017 graduates!

It is an honor to be here today and share with you a true 21st-century American success story. Listen carefully and you may soon find yourselves on the path to greatness.

That greatness was inside of a boy, who sat, like you, at his high school graduation down in Palo Alto a few decades back. That boy had pulled himself up by his bootstraps and gained admission to Stanford University. He had done it through his own grit and determination.

(And multiple edits from his professional writer father on his application essay. And two prior generations of Stanford grads in his legacy.)

But mostly, yeah. It was the grit.

Then, after college, with nothing more than six months of paid living expenses from his parents, he started an internet company.

( Well, he didn’t start it — a computer science buddy from his freshman dorm started it and was like hey, you want to help me with this?)

But the young man had the brilliance, the foresight, to say, yes. Yes, I will start that company with you because I am not doing anything else right now! And so the two started that company. They did it their way. On their own. Through grit.

(Sure, there was the older Stanford buddy who back-doored them into US Web as a subsidiary from day one. And sure, there was that internet bubble.)

But within two years that boy had become a man. A man with $50 million of illiquid, doomed internet stock. He was 24 years old. He got his picture in the Wall Street Journal.

And do you know who that man was? This guy! Me! I was that dude!

And boy was I a schmuck. I partied too much. I’d get angry when people suggested my success was due to luck. I made my own luck! Or so I thought. I was entitled. I was arrogant. I had no clue who I was. And deep down, I was pretty terrified that I was a fraud. In short, I was unhappy.

There were three events that saved me from schmuckdom.

The first event was I became a teacher at Tam. I showed up the first day, ready to bestow my talents upon the school. Then, 15 minutes in, the students locked me out of the room. Those kids had mad skills.

Things did not immediately get better. Kids can smell the fake on you. And the worst teachers try to pretend to be someone they’re not. I apologize to this day to any student I taught before about 2007. [Valedictorian] Nell Mitchell — great speech! Where’s Nell Mitchell’s family? Wave. There you are. Is Nell’s older sister Alex here? Alex — sorry. My bad. Anybody else? OK.

The second event that saved me was I married a wonderful woman who loved me enough to call me on my crap. She pointed out my elitist impulses. She threatened to leave me if I didn’t get sober. It was very hard, but I did indeed get sober and, in turn, more humble.

The third event was my daughter Annika was born with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS), a bizarre, ruthless genetic syndrome. Imagine how hungry you were last night, right before dinner. Or around midnight last night hanging out with your friends. Multiply that by three. That is what my daughter Annika feels every second of the day, even after her last bite of dinner. Annika literally will eat herself to death if left alone with food. Like all sufferers of PWS, she also endures various other cognitive, emotional and physical challenges.

I normally avoid reinforcing the name-brand college industrial complex. But I try to set up the audience in order to later tear down some of their elitist assumptions.

My dad said losing $50 million was the best thing to ever happen to me. But I like to think I could have handled the adversity of not losing it.

I realize this speech is shaping up to be all about me — just like this article! Yipes. But I’m hoping that a fresh breeze of candor will blow away any stink of narcissism. Plus, write what you know.

No matter how smart you think you are, if you smoke weed recreationally every day while cooling your throat with 22-ounce IPAs you’re likely a fraud in a few areas of your life. Just sayin’. Open with a joke, right? They say comedy equals tragedy plus time. In this case comedy equals liberal consumer guilt plus pets.