South Pasadena High School
Alumni Association - 1907-2023
Lester 'Les' Thompson
Lester 'Les''s Latest Interactions
I've spent a lot of my life as a technology guy in Silicon Valley and have been involved with three startup companies. Success in that world involves a good idea, good management, money, and LUCK. My first startup had a good idea-computerized checkout at the grocery store. We didn't have the management or money and were too early. It died a quick, kind death. My second startup had a good technology for electrostatic printing and competed against Xerox. They had some invester's money but we could never catch up to Xerox technically. It died a long, slow death. While struggling to keep that company alive I did consulting work and got involved with the first floppy disks. As the printer company was dying, I and another employee saw the need to be able to copy information on floppy disks at high speed in many different formats. So we started a company to do that. We had the product ready to go just as the first IBM personal computer arrived and there was then a large demand for copying software on floppy disks. We were very lucky with our timing and the company we very successful.