Alan Trefler

Well, I am.

Not by 63, but it could feel that way at that point.

It's in 1983.

And where were you at that point in your life?

Well, I had been working as a systems integrator, putting together, well, very sophisticated systems for some dead banks like Chemical Bank and some still living ones like Citibank.

And I was pretty amazed at how bad the software development process was.

And had the idea of ways to really revolutionize it.

The company I was working for was acquired, not a really fun experience.

And I struck out on my own.

I was beyond all in.

I had to borrow money from family.

And one of the first things I did was take out a $500,000 term life in policy on myself because if this didn't work out, I was going to have to pay this back.

I wasn't going to kill myself.

Well, it was interesting.

It, in many ways, is reflective of what we do today, though after four complete generational rewrites, obviously life has moved on quite a bit.

The initial system was what one would have called a workflow system.

It enabled you to organize, in that era just for large companies, how you wanted to get your business processes to work.

And it let you define the steps, the systems you had to deal with, the human interactions.

And I never liked the word workflow, though it stuck around for a lot of years.

I always thought it should be work-do, because we've always sought to incorporate AI principles and incorporate automation into this from the inception.