Yeah, those widgets imagined themselves, raised start up capital themselves, and built the business themselves. The owner had nothing to do with it.
She just gets worse by the day.
Re: “You didn’t make that...”
In 1986, I began teaching myself the C Programming Language and Altos Xenix (having learned a bit of Unix and SunOS in school,) and began working as a programmer. In 1989, I got a job at a small VAR in Independence, MO, who needed someone familiar with Sco Xenix to support a local supermarket chain that used Sweeda POS scanners and inventory (anyone in the KC area remember “Food Barn?”)
I agreed to work for them for a lower salary ($18,000) a year in return for them to put me through PC based (Novell) network training during that first year, and I earned my Novell Certified Netware Engineer certification in 1990.
This company was fairly small, with monthly sales of about $50,000 a month. The 2 local partners both borrowed against their houses as collateral for their credit line, and they were constantly bumping up against their credit limit. As sales increased, they personally went even deeper in debt to increase their credit limit, and had to bring in additional partners.
By the time I left the company, about 3 1/2 years later, they had become one of the largest VARs in the KC area, with annual sales of nearly 4 million dollars. After another 3 1/2 years working at an education center, I felt the need to get back into the world of network design,installation, and support. I went back to my old company, and they were happy to have me back. By this time, their sales had grown to nearly 7 million a year. 3 years later, the growth of the company had brought them to the attention of Pomeroy IT Solutions, one of the biggest vars in the country, and after the partners negotiated as deal, sold the company to Pomeroy, and the company became their 26th location.
The partners got quite a bit of money out of the deal. But just 10 years before, the partners had to worry about if they would be able to pay the bills and meet payroll. And if they didn’t, they would have been financially ruined and they and their families homeless.
When Obama made that statement, though I hadn’t worked for the company in years, I got REALLY angry, and wrote letters to both of the original partners, telling them that I actually owed ALL of my success in the field of IT, networking, and now CyberSecurity to them, telling them how angry that statement made me, and that I wanted to thank them. Had they not been willing to take a chance on me, who knows where id be today? But they risked their financial well being to start a business, and with it, created so many jobs, as well and putting at least 20 people who started there and later moved on with new skills into terrific careers, at least two of whom have since opened their own businesses and hired employees as well!
They DID build that, and others built on the foundation those two partners created.
Mark