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Growing up in Silicon Valley often feels like living in a paradox. On the surface, it’s a typical suburban environment, but underneath, it’s a hotbed of innovation where world-changing ideas are conceived in garages. For Bhavin Shah, a serial entrepreneur with a remarkable career, this paradox was his playground. In this exclusive interview, he talks about his experiences meeting Steve Wozniak in sixth grade and going through the motions of starting, financing, scaling, and exiting companies.
Growing up in Silicon Valley often feels like living in a paradox. On the surface, it’s a typical suburban environment, but underneath, it’s a hotbed of innovation where world-changing ideas are conceived in garages.
For Bhavin Shah, a serial entrepreneur with a remarkable career, this paradox was his playground. In this exclusive interview, he talks about his experiences meeting Steve Wozniak in sixth grade and going through the motions of starting, financing, scaling, and exiting companies.
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Early Life: The Humble Beginnings in Silicon Valley
Bhavin’s story begins in India, Jakarta, and finally in Silicon Valley, where he arrived as a three-year-old. He has no recollections of his early years in India or Jakarta, but Silicon Valley left an indelible mark on him.
The Valley in the 1980s was not yet the global epicenter of technology it is today. However, technology was already subtly influencing daily life. Bhavin’s father worked in technology, which seemed normal for the area.
Yet, what many would now consider extraordinary was part of Bhavin’s everyday experiences. One memorable figure from his childhood was a neighbor who seemed somewhat dubious in his mother’s eyes.
Despite warnings to avoid him, Bhavin and his brother occasionally secretly talked to this man. Little did they know, they were speaking with an engineer from Atari, who would gift them EEPROMs with chips that were beta versions of Atari games.
This early exposure to cutting-edge technology, even in such a covert form, was a harbinger of the innovative path Bhavin would later pursue. He remembers getting the bootlegged copies of the games and spending his evenings, weekends, and school nights going to Fry’s Electronics
This was a popular store which had lots of computer hardware and software. Bhavin would build computers like the Pentium 386 and different versions of the 486s that the siblings would assemble.
At the time, he was in the fifth or sixth grade and would have debates at the dinner table about getting AOL, CompuServe, or Prodigy.
Meeting the Legends: A Sixth-Grade Encounter with Steve Wozniak
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