When Bob Williamson left home at 17, he lived on the streets and did time for heroin possession. But he pulled himself together, got a job, and eventually began his own business as a manufacturer of art supplies.
In 1993, Williamson started a company to develop software for cafeterias. Today Horizon Software International supplies more than 15,000 schools, colleges, and universities and has sales of $26 million.
Meal payments are made online, and parents can monitor what their kids eat at school. Horizon, based in Atlanta, also sells to hospitals, retirement communities, big corporations, and, soon, US military bases around the globe -- 'wherever', he says, 'large numbers of people need to be fed'.
My childhood was tough. My father was in the Air Force. We moved around a lot. When I graduated from high school, I got all hung up in drugs and all that nonsense. I slept on the side of the road; I stayed in missions; I didn't have anything to eat. I fought a lot. I was in jail lots and lots of times.
As told to Andrew Park, Inc.com
Image: (Above) Bob Williamson hopes his food-tracking software will help kids eat smarter. | Photograph: Jeffrey Salter
(Below) Bob (right) with his brother, Jim, in front of the Williamson home on the US Air Force base in Okinawa in 1951. By the time he was a teenager, Bob had found trouble. | Photograph, courtesy: Bob Williamson
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