Education
- Bachelor's degree in electrical engineeringGeorgia Tech, with a certificate in computer engineering
- Executive MBAUniversity of Texas at Austin
- Industry trainingNumerous courses on a wide range of technologies and products
About
Hi, I'm Jesse Markowitz
I'm here to help you on your Bitcoin journey, whether you're just starting or years in.
My Bitcoin story
I came to this the way a lot of engineers do: through the technology. When I first dug into blockchains, I was hooked. Here was a new way for strangers to agree on what's true without anyone in charge, and every week seemed to bring a new variation built on top of it. The possibilities felt endless.
So I explored all of it. I bought and sold, tried to time the market, and tried the many new ways these projects promised to earn a return on coins and tokens. It was fascinating, and for a while it was exciting just to watch the numbers move.
The longer I looked, the clearer something became. Out of the tens of thousands of coins and tokens out there, hundreds of thousands by some counts, remarkably few provided real value to anyone but the people who created and promoted them.
Bitcoin was different, and not just by degree. No company or founder controls it, no one can print more of it, and no one needs permission to use it. It lets you hold your own money yourself, and it asks you to take responsibility for it. That combination of freedom and self-responsibility is what sets it apart.
That's where my focus is now. I believe Bitcoin is one of the best tools we have for giving people more freedom and more control over their own lives, and helping people understand it and use it well is my way of making the world a little better.
Bitcoin is also free, open-source software, and it's part of a bigger story. Software that anyone can inspect, run and improve makes the world better in the same way. Running your own services at home, on a server like StartOS, applies the same idea to your files, passwords and messages: yours to control, and yours to look after.
Career
I started out programming real-time data acquisition systems and device drivers, then moved into application programming, working directly on the problems people and companies were trying to solve. From there:
- Technical sales support
- Consulting
- Business analyst
- Project manager
- Program manager
- Regional manager of consulting teams
- Cloud service management
Along the way, I also taught specialty technical courses for my employers, and helped develop the curriculum.
Passion
- Teaching
- I've taught a number of technical courses as part of my primary job. Shortly after college I taught SAT prep courses on the side, and I'm also a professional ski instructor (PSIA certified), teaching skiing and snowboarding in the winter. Whatever the subject, I want people who want to learn to have that chance, and I focus on helping them get better at what they want to get better at.
- Freedom
- I want people to be able to realize their potential and live their best lives. Your choices make a difference, and I want to help you see that you have them, and the power to live as you see fit.
- Technology
- I've always been fascinated by technology and computers, and I've been a science-fiction fan since I was a kid. I still love experimenting to see what we can make it do.
- Business models
- I love learning how systems work and where the value really lies. It was great reading about Ray Kroc telling business school students what business McDonald's is really in, and about Uber's approach to disrupting taxi service with its drivers, and more. In the internet age, economies and diseconomies of scale drive so much. Bitcoin is another game changer for our business models.
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