Kintsugi Heroes
Scotty Schindler · 45 min
Scotty Schindler retired at 46 after building a tech empire from scratch — but the real story is the six years of failure, a narcissistic boss, a dot-com crash, and a Supreme Court lawsuit that forged him into who he is today.
People see Scotty Schindler as lucky. He left corporate work at 46 and never had to work again. What they don't see is the six years of failure, a narcissistic boss, a tech crash, repeated rejection, a partnership that ended in a Supreme Court lawsuit, and nights spent compiling evidence he knew would prove his innocence. This is the story of what happened in those years, and what it cost to come through them.
In 1999, after nine years in insurance, Scotty hit a breaking point with a senior manager whose manipulation made staying impossible. He quit to start his own business. Within months, the tech bubble burst. He lost confidence, thinking he'd made a terrible mistake. In early 2001, he applied for jobs to fall back on but got no interviews, no responses, nothing. That rejection forced him to keep trying with his business instead. He bought two programming books, taught himself, and by September had created software three different markets wanted. For the next 18 months he sold door to door, building his real estate software company, Renet, into something that worked.
Then came the partnership that turned to court. By 2005, a friend he'd partnered with to build what could have been an Amazon Web Services equivalent was suing him instead, claiming damages that weren't real. For six months, Scotty gathered evidence alone, lost sleep, faced a community that assumed he was guilty, but never buckled. When it reached the Supreme Court of New South Wales, his friend backed down. Scotty paid $15,000 for a company worth far more, and walked away.
Scotty traces his ability to handle all of this back to high school, when he was ADHD before anyone had a name for it, when kids didn't want to sit with him. He learned then to go inward, stay determined, and keep moving. Every disadvantage, he says, carries a seed of equal or greater advantage. You have to find it yourself. The meaning of the hardship doesn't show up during the hardship. It comes later, when you look back and understand why it had to happen.
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Kintsugi Heroes · Registered Australian not-for-profit · kintsugiheroes.com.au ↗