This news release is told in the first person because I, Matt McCormick, am writing it. It just seemed weird to write it in the third person.
I was born in 1973 in a small town in south central Wisconsin about 25 miles outside of Madison. After graduating high school in 1991 I went to the University of Wisconsin – Madison where I received a Bachelor’s Degree in mechanical engineering.
I then spent 3 years in Minneapolis working as an outside salesman for a small robotics distributor called Controlled Motion and Automation. I learned a ton about dealing with people but in all honesty, I hated that job. So I started taking some programming classes at the University of Minnesota and realized that my true calling was in computer science. So in 1999 I went back to the University of Wisconsin – Madison to get a Master’s Degree in computer science. During that time I specialized in operating system design, was a teaching assistant, and did a summer internship for Cray Supercomputers. I received my Master’s Degree in late 2001 and then spent a year as a classroom lecturer a the University of Wisconsin. It was a great job and I loved teaching. In fact, if I can brag for just a second, I was honored by the computer science students with the teaching assistant of the year award.
In late 2002, I interviewed for a software development position at Microsoft. In an interesting twist of fate, my future business partner at Jet City Device Repair, Tom Lorimor, was one of the people to interview me. I was offered the job and in 2003 started a 4 year career doing development work at Microsoft. My main projects included the Windows Media Center and MSN Messenger.
I actually enjoyed working at Microsoft quite a bit but by March 2007, the entrepreneurial bug had taken hold of me too tight to resist any longer. I quit my job at Microsoft to start my own company building websites for small businesses (called Barbarian Enterprises). During that time I started a small side project fixing broken phones (called it Mobile Device Repair). Initially this side business was meant to help aid in my web development business. It was a platform to test out Google Adwords, search engine optimization techniques, copywriting, web design, and other techniques for building a successful website.
By late 2008, with my web business booming and about 20 phones a week showing up at my house, I had to choose between one or the other. There just weren’t enough hours in the day to do both. That was when Tom Lorimor, who I worked with at Microsoft and had quit about 6 months before me to start his own company, convinced me that the phone repair business was the way to go. So in December 2009, the name was changed to Jet City Device Repair and Tom and I became business partners.
Today Jet City Device Repair operates in two cities (Chicago and Seattle) and we employ four people. Tom runs our Seattle office and I moved back to Chicago to be closer to my family (parents, 3 brothers, and 6 nieces and nephews) and run a Jet City Device Repair shop.