User:Rgum

Roy Gum (born January 20, 1964 in Dallas, Texas) is an American entrepreneur and Internet pioneer. He is the Chairman and Founder of Private Social Networks in Dallas, Texas.

Early Life Gum’s family was hard working and known for taking risks. His father, an airline pilot for Braniff Airlines for 36 yrs, fought as a fighter pilot in WWII flying for the 15th Air force 27th Fighter Squadron piloting a Lockheed P-38 Lightning. This is probably where he got his flare for risk taking adrenaline adventures like skydiving (he has 14 jumps under his belt), Stock Car Racing and Flying Airplanes. He holds a Private, Instrument and Commercial rating. Gum grew up on a large ranch just outside of Gainesville, Texas – a small rural community 65 miles north of Dallas, Texas where he was active in sports (an all district basketball star and an all region football star) and the community starting a number of clubs. At the age of 12 he helped found a local 4-H chapter and at 15 he helped found a local Key Club chapter.

In high school he was good friends with Jeff McMahon who would go on to be the keyboard player for country music star Tim McGraw and he played Junior College Basketball with Dennis Rodman at Cooke County Junior College in 1982 and 1983 seasons.

Entrepreneurship Gum's first step in the business world occurred at age 13, when his parents bought him a Tandy TRS-80 Model 1 for Christmas. He quickly discovered his aptitude for software development and quickly wrote a number of video games where he charged his friend for each game. Unbeknownst to his friends, he coded the software to make sure that he always won and they always lost. While in high school, he held a variety of jobs including being a disk-jockey at the local country music station.

Education After graduation from Gainesville High School in 1982, Gum attended Cooke County Junior College on a basketball scholarship and played with future NBA star Dennis Rodman through the 1982 and 1983 seasons and later transferred to the University of North Texas and landed his first real computer in 1984 working for the Denton Count Sheriffs Department in Denton, Texas. There he was introduced to ARC Net, the predecessor to the internet, and developed a number of important applications for file access and manipulation. One application, Storm, was an early version of a web browser but never caught on.

Family and personal interests Gum married Terri Williams, a sales executive for Hyatt hotels, in a ceremony on June 22, 2002 in San Francisco at Grace Cathedral. Gum is an outspoken admirer of Winston Churchill and US General George S Patton and often relates Patton’s philosophy to the business world. His political views trend toward conservative and libertarianism, but he feels that most politicians have lost sight of their role in society and according to Gum, “They are all a bunch of worthless bastards and there isn’t one of them that gives a damn about any of us regardless of their affiliation”. Although he was a member of the Republican Party, he became a registered Independent during the presidency of George W Bush due to feelings that the Party had lost its fiscally conservative values. He treats relationships with major political parties pragmatically, and now chooses not to become directly involved with them.

Gum cultivates a casual lifestyle, rarely wearing a suit, but is a collector of and investor in Tommy Bahama.