Robert C. Clardy

1952 - 1957 A native Texan, I lived in Houston, San Antonio, and El Paso during my early years. I thoroughly enjoyed my Texas years and still believe it is a great place to be from.

1957 - 1974 In schools. Lots of them. We moved a lot. At the end of it all, I came away with a double major degree from Rice University. I had a Bachelor of Arts degree in Math Sciences and a Bachelor of Sciences degree in Electrical Engineering. That got me a job with Boeing.

1974 - 1979 I worked as an Electrical Engineer for Boeing Aerospace. I did Sneak Circuit Analysis on a variety of complex systems including jets, satellites, nuclear power plants, and the space shuttle. After Boeing got me to Seattle, I worked as a senior radar engineer on the AWACS radar plane. In the evenings, I worked on my MBA degree. My senior thesis (a case study of a small business startup) led me to the next big change in my career.

1979 - 1996 Programmer, entrepreneur, manager, marketer, contract administrator, CEO, and occasional janitor. I started Synergistic Software in June of '79 and built it into a small but thriving software development company. The early programs were all my work, but I eventually got others involved as the work grew. My wife, Ann, quit her CPA job and also became a full-time Synergistican in 1980 and we eventually built a staff of programmers, artists, gamers, testers, and computer geeks that numbered from 20 to 30 over the years. We developed over 150 products for a wide variety of software publishers. Products included business applications, utilities, games, and educational software programs. In '96, we merged into Sierra On-Line, along with a number of other software developers, and focused just on computer games for a few years. But, as Sierra, too, merged into a series of larger and larger corporate monoliths, the Clardys eventually left to seek new experiences.

1996 - 2001 Between "real" jobs, I did many things. Played the stock market during the heady end of the millennium (before the market turned on us). I started several pet welfare organizations including The PetHelpers Network. I personally provided foster homes for dozens of dogs and helped find homes for hundreds. I tried to start up a new software game development company (Eclectic Games), but just could not get enthused enough about doing it all again. Finally, in mid-2000, I joined with Annette Schofield and Livingsoft to make sewing pattern generating software.