About twenty years ago, I met a guy named Byron Preiss. I was 24 and just starting out at Spinnaker Software and he was the supremely talented, very smart packager that my boss had just purchased several million dollars worth of software from.

Turns out that Byron was only seven years older than me.

We worked closely together for two years, arguing nearly every day about the products we ended up creating together. We worked with Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury and artists and writers and programmers. In 1985, it was a very new deal to be a packager of content, to work with brands and carve out new rights, to imagine new forms of media. Byron was doing all of those things.

One day, Byron said to me, "You should go out on your own. I’ll help you. I’ll introduce you to people." Byron not only demonstrated to me that the new media enabled the individual to make stuff, but he gave me permission to try.

Byron Preiss, 52, Digital Publishing Pioneer, Dies – New York Times.