ROI

Net worth of my career.  I had two big winners early on, Aspen for USDOT (1991-1997) and Saleslogix (1998-2000).  After the Dot Com crash, I was in corporate consulting for many years, with an occasional startup attempt.

Aspen/ISS, 1996 - Principal designer for a team of six.  The first year estimate of savings was $60 million from improved inspections and reduced accidents.  Probably $120-150 million over the first ten years.

SupportLogix, 2000 - Architect for a team of about twenty.  It had an IRR of 120% the 1st year. A guesstimate of $2 million per year, or $44 million.  But likely over $80 million, it had strong sales when it was first released.

Sila, 2018 - Architect of a crypto platform that received $20.7 million in new funding.

Cisco SAP, 2008 - I was probably the primary cause of death for a misguided supply chain project, a savings of $20 million.

Avnet Q2O, 2002 - Engineer on a team of seven.  Q2O processed $1.5 billion in sales the first year.  At a savings of 1%, that's $15 million per year.  Perhaps a net $80 million.

Infosys, 2008 - Senior architect on several projects.  My main project (Siebel call center) was double the size and scope of the Aetna project and used by several business units.  Guesstimate of $8 million.

Aetna Case Management, 2011 - I was senior architect for a team of twenty, total project budget was $4 million.

Amdocs, 2012 - I wrote the JMX foundation for a new payment system running one million monetary transactions per day.  Guesstimate of $0.01 savings per transaction would be $3.65 million annually.  Guesstimate a net of $15 million.

Verizon Sales App, 2005 - I was an independent expert hired by IBM for a legal dispute between Verizon, IBM and a vendor.   The result was against the vendor, probably $1-2 million.

Boise State, 1997 - Four Federal Highway grants totaling over $1 million.

Unigard AgentView, 2006 - Architect for team of five.  $250K annual savings.

Standard Insurance Fundlink, 2004 - Architect for a team of five.  Very similar to the Unigard project.  $250K annual savings.

Gloo, 2014 - I replaced an over-designed analytics system with an appropriately scaled system.  I estimate a $250K saving.

Several projects that died for various reasons - DoD, Staples, CableLabs, Sunhill, Shazzle.  A few small projects I can't measure - Cingular, Transcore, JP Morgan.  A couple that eventually got off the ground after me - Sheridan, T-Mobile.

So my lifetime score looks close to $300 million over a 30-year period or $10 million per year and my cut was about 1%.    This almost makes me the Anti-Elon Musk, I made no fortune creating stuff that worked.  haha.