Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 95
teaching us thriftiness at an early age. It was just one of many ways through which they
taught us the value of money. So, to have a little spending cash I decided to create my
own comic book. Since I couldn’t print it, I figured I would charge my classmates to read
it. Obviously I didn’t make a fortune with it; I couldn’t even buy a snack with the
proceeds. But I was very proud of my work and I spent a lot of time improving it.
Totally ignorant of my realizations in later life, I was having my first experiments at value
creation and at negotiating prices with the marketplace. No doubt this and other similar
little lessons are at the base of my later entrepreneurial bend and, I am sure, are no
different than what uncountable children experience in their young lives.
To be sure, value is not created at the snap of a finger, no matter how brilliant the
underlying concept may be. In fact, as common wisdom correctly asserts, success is 90
% perspiration and 10 % inspiration. The titans of entrepreneurial success have passed
on to us their own stories. From Carnegie to Gates, and all in between, we learn that
this ratio of perspiration to inspiration is about right. Thus, the desire and capacity to
work become key ingredients of value creation. Another ingredient, capital, as I
discussed before, can usually be found if the proper formula is presented to the
potential investors.
While working on my Master of Engineering degree at Texas A&M in 1962, I ran into a
mathematics teacher by the appropriate name of Cube Root Kent. He was thusly
baptized by waves of students who through personal experience found out that he
never gave As to more than the cube root of the number of students in his class. I was
taking a course in partial differential equations with about 11 other students. Since
humans cannot be split into fractions and we were closer to eight than to twenty-seven,
only two would get an A. I worked in detail every problem in the textbook and learned
every hidden principle. It took me a disproportionate number of hours to do so, but at
the end of the semester I was rewarded with the coveted A. I figured that all that work
had a value to future students and that I may as well get some benefit from it.
I had the manuscript, but now I needed copies and a marketing system. I needed capital
to produce and deliver my product. I didn’t have it and therefore couldn’t do it alone. I
needed an investor. I enlisted as my partner one of the most brilliant students I saw
frequently at the time. His capital contribution came by means of sweat equity. Juan
Dominguez was my brother Chris’ roommate and a straight A Physics major. We got
hold of a blue-line duplicating machine and lists of students who followed me taking the
differential equations course. We marketed one-on-one and set the price by trial and
error but we raised enough revenue to eat for a good part of the next semester. The
answers booklet was such a good teaching help that we were able to repeat the offer
two more semesters, even after I graduated.
Eventually the math department became suspicious because all students were turning
in their homework as if copying from each other. The teachers changed the book. The
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