Jason Hoffman’s quest to build the new web machine
October 12th, 2012
There are a few thousand people around the world trying to reimagine computing to make it faster and more energy-efficient so we can continue to make the web an integral part of our lives. But unlike most of them, Jason Hoffman doesn’t work at a big Internet company like Google or Facebook and he didn’t start with a background in computer science. Hoffman came to the challenge by a different path: a quest to save his mother’s life.
In 2005, Hoffman’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. His grandmother had died of the same disease . His mom thought it was a death sentence. Hoffman, then working as a doctor, reoriented his life to help her fight the disease. But instead of drawing on his medical training, he tapped his interest in computing — specifically the small hosting company he had started as a side project to help some of his friends build out new web services such as WordPress (see disclosure) or 37 Signals.
