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But Tom, What Is Your Passion? A Friend Asked Former teen whiz kid finds new role Mike Roberts - The Province SOURCE: The Vancouver Province WWWeb: http://tinyurl.com/4hu8b Monday, November 15, 2004 Following a blazing career arc through the rarified stratosphere of the high-tech sector, one has to wonder if Tom "Whiz Kid" Williams bumped his bean on his way back down to Earth. Seriously. Williams was just a 14-year-old kid running his own software company out of his Victoria bedroom when Apple snapped him up. An $80,000-a-year salary and a swank pad in Silicon Valley were just the beginning for the teen titan described as a maverick and a genius. The next decade would see Williams, now 25, pioneer the interactive music industry for Apple, bounce around Fortune 500 boardrooms honing websites and business plans, or assessing online trends and start-up threats for billionaire venture capitalists. At the height of it all, the Grade 8 drop-out was pulling in nearly half a million a year. Private jets, exclusive clubs, offices in New York and Los Angeles -- Williams had it all, or so he thought. Just shy of his 25th birthday, Tom Williams had an epiphany, a quarter-life crisis sparked by a question from a friend: "But Tom, what are you passionate about?" "In the pursuit of the almighty dollar, fame and glory and all that, I'd lost sight of that, completely. I couldn't answer that very simple question," says Williams, a rail-thin young man who comes across more like an earnest, coffee-house folk singer than a knowledge-industry mastermind. So, Williams packed it all in, holed up in a South Granville apartment with his new fiancee -- rising Vancouver pop star, Jessie Farrel -- and set to work on Plenteus, an online marketplace for charitable giving. "If you care about the three-toed spotted marmot, or you care about something as big as the Downtown Eastside or cancer, it doesn't matter," says Williams. "We will be able to help you find that cause." A year of his life and a wad of his cash for an online charity database that allows donors to pick and choose their worthy cause? His friends think he's nuts. But Williams is passionate about Plenteus, and its first initiative, a novel holiday gift-certificate program called GiveMeaning (which launches today -- National Philanthropy Day -- at http://www.givemeaning.com "I have no interest anymore in talking," says Williams. "From the time I was 14, all I did was talk. I'm great at talking, but it's time to do." Do he did. And while some may say the high-flying wunderkind has gone and lost his marbles, he'll simply remind them that there's more to life than 18-hour working days and the almighty dollar. "It doesn't take Tom's Great Adventure to arrive at that conclusion," says the charity company CEO. [log in to unmask] Reference: Plenteus (online marketplace for charitable giving) http://www.givemeaning.com SOURCE: The Vancouver Province WWWeb: http://tinyurl.com/4hu8b * * * Thanks Marg! . Murray Charters <[log in to unmask]> Please place this address in your address book Please purge all others Web site: Parkinsons Resources on the WWWeb http://www.geocities.com/murraycharters ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn