About Steve

The Story So Far

I was born in Odessa, Ukraine, grew up in San Diego, and now live on Kauai. That route through three very different places is probably why my writing has never sat still in one genre.

2006 — the first four books

My publishing started with what people were actually doing online at the time: online dating, and MySpace. Four titles in fourteen months — Chemistry and Numbers and its follow-up, and the two YourSpace books. They were guides to brand-new social platforms, written while those platforms were still being figured out.

2008 — Shoestring Venture

Then came Shoestring Venture: The Startup Bible — 560 pages, co-written with Richard Hooker, on how to build a company without capital behind you. It's the book where the writing and the business ran into each other.

The operating years

For most of the stretch that followed I was running things rather than writing about them. Senior leadership work: building ventures, turning around companies that were struggling, and putting Internet strategy into businesses that hadn't had any. I launched a transportation company in Hawaii and grew it to profitability. I served as COO of a cosmetic company and restored it to profit. Along the way I ran marketing across healthcare, technology, education and power. The throughline was reconfiguring business models, making operations actually work, and building teams that collaborate.

2019 — Chronic Internet

I formed Chronic Internet LLC in March 2019, the same year everything else in my life changed shape, and spent years building it into what it is. It's a company of one person and a great deal of software: a network of small automated programs, hundreds of them, each handling a single job, together keeping a group of independent web properties running day and night. A news publication. A live-events guide. A music and video studio. A research desk. A few smaller stores and apps. Work that would ordinarily take a staff of dozens, built and supervised by one person from a desk on Kauai.

The interesting part isn't the automation. It's the question underneath it: how much can one person actually run now? Each property is a live experiment in answering that. Some work. Some don't, and those teach me more.

2024 onward — writing again

Running Chronic Internet is what brought me back to writing. It means spending every day inside problems I used to write about from a distance: how a business gets found, what holds it together, where it quietly breaks. Six books since late 2024, across business, personal growth, fiction, history and cuisine, because life doesn't fit into neat categories. The books come out of the work, not the other way around.

My Writing Philosophy

I write books I wish existed when I needed them. Practical guides that don't waste your time. Stories that stay with you long after you've finished reading. Content that respects your intelligence and delivers real value.

Every book starts with a question: "Will this genuinely help someone?" If the answer isn't a clear yes, I don't write it. Life is too short for books that don't matter.

Beyond Writing

When I'm not writing, I'm usually exploring new ideas, spending time with family, or diving deep into research for my next project. I believe in continuous learning and pushing creative boundaries.

I'm also passionate about supporting fellow writers and entrepreneurs. If you're working on something meaningful and think I might be able to help, don't hesitate to reach out.