Russ: This is The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and seen online at thebusinessmakers.com, and I really like our announcer intro music a lot. In fact, John, play the Los Lonely Boys intro. All right, vaminos! And this is that show about those that most positively affect our lives, the innovators and entrepreneurs. We sit down with them each week, person to person, to tell their stories. In fact, the idea to do this show first popped up back in late 1993 or early 1994, I can't remember exactly, but I was watching a news TV program, and there was a debate going on between the Clinton people and the Bush Sr. people about who deserved credit for the burgeoning economy that had really awakened.

At the time, I was in the microcomputer world, right in the middle of it, the networking world - was blown away by the progress - so when I heard this argument, I kinda gasped and thought, "Neither of you deserved credit for what's happening." The credit for the rapidly escalating economy had to go to Bill Gates and Andy Grove of Intel and our own guy that's been on the show, Rod Canyon, and Don Estridge of IBM and Dan Bricklin of VisiCalc and Steve Jobs and Mr. Wozniak, who's also been on the show, and then it just really bugged me that politicians were arguing over who deserved credit for the economy when it was clearly the innovators.

And then fast-forward about a decade, and Thomas Friedman had just released The World Is Flat, and he had this line in the book that he used to describe the way that global capitalism was breaking out and spreading, particularly in China and India, and it went like this: "Today Bill Gates is the Britney Spears of China, and the problem is, in the United States, Britney Spears is Britney Spears," and I thought, "No kidding," so ultimately that led to the BusinessMakers Show, championing entrepreneurship.

Now, speaking of innovators and entrepreneurs, our recent BusinessMaker of the Year Awards and celebration was such a success that we are definitely going to make it into an annual event. And this was a happening party put on by the BusinessMakers and our cool event sponsors that included PKF Texas, the Tasting Room, YSC, the London-based consulting firm, Champion Energy Services, Pierpont Communications, and DRG&L, and I mention them because they are totally like us and compatible with our mission, and, man, it was fun, and the awards that night were also fun. We named our Rising Star of the Year, and that went to Monica Danna of Colab, and then our Bootstrapper of the Year, which went to Gaurav Khandelwal of ChaiONE. Gaurav is a guest on today's show.

And then our BusinessMaker of the Year Award actually went to two guys - first, Bill Sherrill, entrepreneur, public servant - he was in the Johnson administration - and then entrepreneur-teacher because he's the founder of the Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship. That's out at the University of Houston, this year rated number one by Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine. Interestingly enough, they were rated number two in 2010 and number one in 2009 and number two in 2008. That's for the undergrad entrepreneur program at the university level. Really cool - Bill Sherrill. And then our other BusinessMaker of the Year Award went to Paul Frison, cereal entrepreneur and founding CEO of the Houston Technology Center, recently named as one of the top ten technology incubators changing the world. Two real cool guys.

All right, and here's our line-up for today's show. First up, William Hurley, more commonly known as Whurley, the guy who took the high-school diploma out of Temple High School and promptly became the bass player for a very happening funk band, and then he took that to become an audio-video expert, syncing up audio and video, which was way in demand back then, and that led to a very prestigious position with Apple Computer, where he became a leading advocate of open-source software, probably more accurately called a cult leader of open-source software. That led to a leading-edge position with IBM, where he's the owner of multiple patents, which led to him become the open-source leader at BMC Software, which led, ultimately, to my first interview with him, exactly one year ago, when he, along with two cofounders, launched Chaotic Moon Studios, a mobile application studio.

And so, earlier this week, one year after the launch of Chaotic Moon, I sat down with him again in Austin, at the end of South by Southwest, and got an update, and what an update it is! If you haven't heard about this, his company designed and built the most significant brand-new digital publication, only recently launched, and that is The Daily, NewsCorp's entrée into the new age of journalism. Great interview. And then that's gonna be followed by an update with the winner of the Bootstrapper of the Year at our recent event. I'm talking about Gaurav Khandelwal, the founder and CEO of ChaiONE, the digital-media company that arose out of Gaurav's original tea company. But first -

That's right. It's time for the BusinessMakers School of Business, and this is not your business-as-usual school. Now, for you regular listeners, you've probably figured out, "Hey, where's John Beddow, the publisher?" Well, John had a crisis situation arise, right before today's show started. I think it involved the White House. I'm not sure. So he's not gonna be with me this morning, and I'm gonna have to persevere without him, and so I'm gonna kick off the School of Business starting with our history lesson.

So this week in business history, in 1860, the corkscrew was patented by M.L. Burn of New York. The corkscrew. Sometimes we don't think about things so basic as having patents, but, boy, it did, and thank goodness. All right. Also, this week in business history, in 1867, the United States buys Alaska from Russia for $0.02 an acre. I think it was a total of $7,200,000.00 - also known as Seward's Folly. I think we got a real good deal there. Worked out well for us. This week in business history, in 1889, the Eiffel Tower officially opens, commemorating the French Revolution.

Then, also, this week in business history, in 1940, is the birthday of Barney Frank, the Democrat representative from Massachusetts. Let's see, that means Barney today would be 71 years old. He's the originator of subprime mortgages. Worked real well for about a decade. All right, also this week in business history, in 1945, is the birthday of Eric Clapton in Ripley, England. All right, that means that Eric is now 66 years old. Lots of birthdays this week because also, this week in business history, in 1948, is the birthday of Al Gore, the author of An Inconvenient Truth. Happy birthday, Albert. That means he is 63 years old.

Okay, moving forward, this week in business history, in 1968, LBJ announces he will not seek reelection. Well, for those of you who were around at the time, we all knew that was kind of a surprise announcement. Usually the way the press works, you know those things ahead of time, but, boy, he just sort of pulled it out in a national announcement and surprised everybody because he was eligible for one more term. Moving on, this week in business history, in 1970, the AMC gremlin is introduced. Many of us think it was one of the strangest and perhaps ugliest vehicle every to be announced, so that was 41 years ago.

Next, this week in business history, in 1973, was the launch of Lexis-Nexis, the computerized legal research service, still going strong, which totally impresses me. I clearly thought, with the advent of free information on the Internet, that it would make them no longer viable, but that's not been the case whatsoever. Next up, this week in business history, in 1976, Steve Wozniak and Steven Jobs get together and found Apple Computer Company, so Apple is 35 years old now. Steve Wozniak's been one of the most interesting guests that we've had here on The BusinessMakers Show, and what a company that has turned into under the leadership of Steven Jobs.

This week in business history, in 1977, Fleetwood Mac's Rumors album goes to number one and stays number one for 31 weeks. Now, that's an album that Malcolm Gladwell likes to talk about a whole lot, about how long that band, Fleetwood Mac, worked, until they finally got to a number-one hit, and he contrasts that with kind of the way society's appetite is these days - it's totally focused on instant success - and his concern about that, that that would not allow for artists, for innovators, to spend a long time refining their skills and honing their expertise.

Up next, this week in business history, in 1981, President Ronald Reagan is shot and wounded by John Hinckley III. Now, that was an interesting assassination attempt. Everyone thought that President Reagan was not hit at first, and then it was kind of thought that he just had a flesh wound, and it was probably three minutes after they had left the scene that actually a Secret Service agent saw blood - I think he even coughed up some blood - and it turned out to be a real serious wound, but he came through the surgery just fine.

Next up, this week in business history, in 1987, IBM introduces PS2 and OS2. I actually was at the national introduction. It was in Miami, Florida. It was very interesting. People were beginning to think at that time, "We're gonna see IBM's strategy against Bill Gates." Bill had become extremely powerful with his operating system, DOS, and there was sort of this feeling in the industry that IBM would not let that continue, and that might have been the original intent, and - interesting side note about the announcement that day - Bill Gates was there in attendance.

The guy I was with, he and I decided, "Well, let's follow him around." We followed him around in the trade show. It was real interesting 'cause IBM would lift up the covers on the PS2s and show him the inside, and he was asking questions just like the rest of us were doing, which made us feel like, "Well, they certainly didn't run it by him before they announced it," but, ultimately, as it turned out, Microsoft and Bill Gates were so powerful that IBM chose not to make OS2 be a proprietary operating system on their future PCs.

And, last but not least, this week in business history, in 2004, Google introduces the Gmail product to the public. Real interesting announcement at the time. It's been wildly used and successful, probably because it's free, but it does have sort of a weird little wrinkle to it, the way it handles e-mail threads. But anyway, that wraps up today's history lesson, from the corkscrew all the way to Gmail. And before I wrap up today's School of Business, it's time for the very popular PKF Texas Entrepreneur's Playbook, so let's welcome Mr. Greg Price on the piano.

All right, and that wraps up this morning's school of business. Stay tuned in for our interview with Whurley, the founder of Chaotic Moon Studios, as he describes the launch of The Daily. And then that's gonna be followed by our interview with Gaurav Khandelwal, the founder and CEO of ChaiONE. You're listening to The BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com.