The Whitehouse Blog - Startup Stories: Fast Forward, With a Few Speed Bumps

John Belizaire

April 23, 2012
10:00 AM EDT
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"Always be humble and don’t let anybody say you don't work hard. Do your best” were the words of wisdom instilled in me by my Haitian-born parents. They’d experienced the dictatorship of Jean Claude Duvalier, yet remained total optimists.

I thought of them when I arrived at the White House earlier this month. I thought I was just going to attend the signing of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act but in fact, I did more than that. First, I was fortunate enough to attend a roundtable discussion to discuss how the new law will fuel innovation across the country and then we had the privilege of meeting President Obama and joined him on the podium in the Rose Garden to sign the bill into law.

As I stood up there, I felt honored to part of such a historic occasion. I was thinking of my own startup, my co-founders, our customers, our employees and our investors, and my journey to this moment.

I was born in Nassau, Bahamas, and then five years later, my family moved to New York. Like many immigrants from the Caribbean, we made Brooklyn, NY, our home.

In junior high school, I worked hard doing odd jobs to save money to buy my first computer. I started my first (little) company selling colorful computer disks and typing papers for my high school teachers, who were completing their Masters degrees. While my friends had paper routes, I was already going the techie route.

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MILWAUKEE PROFESSIONALS ASSOCIATION supports the JOBS act - Jumpstart our Business Startups and look forward to it being an avenue of re-defining, re-branding and un-trapping vetted, hidden talented and NEW neighborhood-level businesses.