Future² Innovation

At the age of twenty-six, John Roa founded a tech-consulting and design firm,  ÄKTA,  that he sold for a fortune to Salesforce.  His account of his rise from a self-described below-average student, to becoming a poster boy for the ambitious, successful young entrepreneur, to nearly destroying himself in the process is the subject of his book, A Practical Way to Get Rich . . . and Die Trying. Roa's twenty-year-long journey from being dead-broke to wealth he never imagined is an absurd and often comical story of talent, luck, risk, rapidly changing technology, larger-than-life personalities, sex, gambling, and excessive alcohol and drug consumption. We covered lots of ground in this conversation, including: How Roa went from a six-figure debt to multi-millionaire before the age of 30 The toxic lifestyle he led while building his company, AKTA The psychotic breakdown he experienced, which forced him to sell his company And the lessons learned along the way about business and life Listeners of th