Gerard Spinks was born and raised on the southside of Peoria, Illinois. His mother, along with his brother Jeronimo Spinx and sister Juanita raised him. He is the youngest child of 4 kids. Gerard eventually made it out of the ghetto in Peoria, Illinois and went on to college, played football, moved to Oakland, CA in 1989, and eventually made over $1,000,000 in income in the Silicon Valley. He negotiated selling his company for $15,000,000 – $25,000,000 in stock options to Netfish Technologies by developing a Java software package that converted EDI X12 data to XML data.
He pitched a deal for 300,000 shares to CEO Ravi Iyer. Ravi Iyer countered and offered Gerard 100,000 shares. Using market research, the stock valuation came in at $150-$250 per share. Our main competitor at the time, went public right before we did and their shares rose to a opening day close at $279 per share. Based upon the 100,000 options, Gerard was worth $27,000,000 on paper based upon the webMethods valuation and subsequent launch of its initial public offering.
Ultimately, Netfish Technologies could never turn the corner on its IPO and never made it to the public offering. Right after this, the market tanked and all of the shares tanked with it. Gerard does not have an MBA, did not get raised in a middle income neighborhood, did not get raised with a father, did not make it in professional sports, and did not go to a top flight school. Gerard became a business entrepreneur through God, a solid and consistent mother, determination, hard work, setbacks, persistence, and sure will power.
This blog is a guide for young black folks to use to come up with as they sit in their neighborhoods throughout ghettos across the world trying to figure out how to get and keep getting paid. This focuses on the one thing that regular school education doesn’t teach us, and that is to gain wealth and how to become a millionaire. The intention is that this blog will inspire at least 1000 people to create and generate personal wealth and create the next internet millionaire and get out the hood.
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