Long before Web Experts existed, our founder Elliott Augustine was sitting in one of his dad's computer school classrooms, hacking away at COBOL on a Televideo terminal. The setup was a networked 20-megabyte hard drive, an 8-inch floppy, and CP/M. At the time, that kind of access felt almost unreal.
Most people were getting their hands on Commodores, early Apple machines, or Tandy systems. He was surrounded by Kaypros, Compaq "luggables," Zenith machines, and a constant flow of what felt like cutting edge technology. It was not in a lab and it was not behind glass. It was right there to use, break, learn from, and figure out.
Access Removes The Fear
That kind of exposure changes you. It removes the fear, and that matters more than any particular skill you pick up along the way. You stop seeing computers as something mysterious and start seeing them as something you can take apart mentally.
You learn how things actually work, not just how to use them. There is a real difference between operating a machine and understanding what it is doing underneath. One of those makes you a user, the other makes you dangerous in the good sense.
You also get comfortable being stuck. More importantly, you get comfortable figuring your way out of it. That second part is a skill almost nobody teaches directly, and it comes almost entirely from having enough access to fail repeatedly without consequence.
It Shaped How We Think
Looking back, that environment did more than teach him how to code. It shaped how he thinks, and by extension it shaped how this firm operates. It built the foundation for everything that came after, from development to running a business to now working with AI.
That is not nostalgia for old hardware. Nobody is arguing that an 8-inch floppy was better than what we have now. The point is what happens to a person who gets to sit with technology before anyone has decided what it is for.
Before It Is Polished
There is something powerful about being around emerging technology before it is polished and before it is easy. You develop instincts that do not come from tutorials or documentation. The tutorials all arrive later, after someone else has already decided which paths are worth walking.
You learn by doing, by failing, and by staying curious. That sequence has not changed in forty years, and we do not expect it to change now. The tools are different, the pattern is identical.
The Same Thing Is Happening With AI
That early access was not just an advantage. It was everything, and it is a useful reminder for anyone watching AI develop right now. The technology is messy, the documentation is incomplete, and half of what works today will be replaced within a year.
The people who get closest to the technology early, who experiment and push on it, are the ones who end up shaping what comes next. That was true of CP/M machines in a classroom and it is true of AI models today. Everyone else waits for the polished version and then wonders why the decisions were already made without them.