rTag Global Position Gaming, Inc.

My name is Tim and I am the CEO and Co-Founder of rTag Global Position Gaming. I began my career in 1993 by creating promotional web sites for local Phoenix, Arizona area bands. When the bass player for one of my client-bands, Oil, mentioned his mom baked and sold cookies, I suggested that I create a catalog site. She said “ok” and my life as a web developer began.

My Scene with Trey Parker, co-creator of “South Park”, in 1997’s “Orgazmo”:

Four years later, I was the only developer at an “independent film studio and video wholesaler” in San Diego, Ca. By “independent film studio and video wholesaler”, I of course mean, an adult film company. I spent three years there, learning to edit video, develop CGI scripts and a hand full of other skills both computer and film related. Around this time, O.T. Ashton, rTag’s Creative Director and my brother, was working as video producer at 911 Entertainment in San Francisco, Ca. They needed an editor, so he called me and I convinced them to hire me as a developer, escaping the “independent film studio and video wholesaler” business.

In 1999, the record label ran out of money and chained the doors of its 2nd st and Howard office in San Francisco. However, this was the Bay Area and developers were fueling the “dotcom” era’s massive wealth creation. I was hired as web developer #1 at Lightspeed Interactive, Inc., where I headed up no fewer than 20 major releases including projects for Cisco, Harvard Business School, Xerox, Microsoft, Intel and SGI. After four years of large-scale development, I left Lightspeed and spent some time studying.

I returned to development in 2003 and began a small freelance firm that I ran until 2007. At which point, I was hired by Juice Wireless in Los Angeles, Ca.  After Juice, I developed a JavaScript front-end framework for Mogreet, Inc in Venice, Ca. In October, 2008, I started rTag Global Position Gaming, Inc. with Neil MacMillan, a friend with years of mobile development experience. We spent six months building out the “Alpha” version of rTag that is currently running at rTag.mobi.

October, 2008:

rTag, Inc. is my first CEO position. I have run small companies and large projects for over a decade and I have learned that running a start-up requires a different set of skills. I still provide engineering and development support at rTag in order to remain in “boot-strap” mode for as long as we can. The advice we have received over the years has been diverse, but there has been a single common thread, the more we do can ourselves, the brighter our future opportunities.

I love running rTag, Inc. It has been all-consuming and terribly rewarding. Engineering is also still a great love of mine. It is my hope that the combination of the two interests will keep me busy for a while.

Life IS a game.