This was a wild time to begin a career, and I was just dropping out of college, having been the class of '99 but delayed a semester already due to bad work/life balance. I was self-teaching in web and systems programming and generally doing things on the internet, had a good grasp of things technically, but had no grounding in finance, business, stock options, or any of it. Everywhere around me seemed like opportunity, and Linux seemed somehow related. I even was supposed to have stock options in VA Linux[1] due to my paid work there, but that didn't pan out in the end. I didn't yet know how the internet would change everything, but it felt like it was definitely happening, and somehow that meant everyone involved would get rich. The media story didn't help. I wouldn't change any of it, though. I did it for the love of learning and still do.

[1] https://www.wired.com/1999/12/va-linux-sets-ipo-record/