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Milo Medin, chief technology officer at Excite@Home, describes himself as a tinkering Yugoslavian farm boy. He tells a story of how his tinkering bent began dangerously when, as a toddler, he released the safety on his father's 12-gauge shotgun, pulled the trigger and blew a magnificent hole in the porch roof.
Much later in life, while happily ensconced in a high-tech job for NASA, Mr. Medin met a venture capitalist who had been told by a mutual friend that the tinkerer was the only one who could solve the technical problems of a company known then as @Home.
As Mr. Medin tells it, John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers said he could make Mr. Medin rich. The tinkerer responded that he was happy at NASA because his job affected so many lives - and added, rhetorically,...