![]() College and Southern Rockīefore I started classes at the University of Virginia, I wanted to be a lawyer. ![]() In my sophomore year, I noticed that girls liked boys who played guitar. I was on the debate team and spent most of my free time playing Dungeons & Dragons and programming my Commodore64. The fact that I sold tomato plants probably did not help. ![]() I had friends, but as an overweight kid with glasses and bad skin, my social options were limited. I wasn’t one of the cool kids in high school. It was not a scalable business, but the money was good for a 13-year-old boy in Virginia. I planted tomato seeds and when they sprouted, I went around our neighborhood selling the plants. When I was 13, I started my first money-making venture. I required stitches, but somehow emerged from childhood without significant brain damage. I once cracked my skull open trying to jump my bicycle over the Leoni’s driveway. We fell out of trees and caught tadpoles in the creek. Like all eldest sons, my treatment of my two little bothers fell into that grey area between play and abuse. I recommend a boring childhood if you have the option. My parents were too young to take care of me and put me up for adoption by a wonderful couple (aka “Mom and Dad”) who would treasure me, feed me, and move me from my cosmopolitan Georgetown home to the Virginia suburbs. My outlook on life has changed little since then. On Septemin Washington D.C., I came into this world naked and confused, kicking and screaming. That’s me in a nutshell, but if you really want to know, let me just open this bottle of wine and I’ll tell you … My Life Story In my copious spare time, I publish Disrupting Japan, which is a labor of love. I’ve worked with TEPCO and other large Japanese firms to use new technology to create new businesses, taught corporate innovation at NYU’s Tokyo campus, and I’m a an active contributor to several publications. I’m the Head of Google for Startups Japan. I participate actively as an investor, founder, mentor, and all-around noodge. If you listen to the founders and creators here, you hear a very different story than the one the politicians and academics tell. I believe in Japan and the startup community here. At 55, I’m still trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up. My dreams of being a rockstar never worked out, but over the years I’ve managed to have fun, make friends, fall in love, sell a couple of companies and bankrupt a couple of others. Tim Romero is a Tokyo-based innovator, author, and entrepreneur who finds speaking of one’s self in the third person to be insufferably pompous.
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