Tom Campbell

Website: http://www.esnipe.com/free

Tom Campbell was kicked out of high school, dropped out of college, was fired from a number of dream jobs, and rebooted his career before teaching himself programming at a relatively late age. In the late 1980s he developed the programming language Builder for the first company he started, hyperkinetix. He was offered his choice of two jobs at Microsoft in 1996 and accepted a position as Program Manager for Visual Basic, a dream job he managed not to be fired from. He will be forever grateful for his work and personal experiences at Microsoft, one of the highlights of his life. A compulsive eBay user, he ran across eSnipe (http://www.esnipe.com) after retiring in 2000. eSnipe is service to help eliminate overbidding by deferring bids until the last minute, a practice called “sniping” in online auction parlance. In late 2000 he bought eSnipe when it was put for for sale on eBay--and won, using eSnipe to place the bid. He has been CEO of eSnipe since January 2001.