Prairie Portraits is a weekly set of questions intended to help the community get to know someone from the Silicon Prairie startup scene a little bit better. Prairie Portraits feature a fixed set of questions ranging from career background and personal preferences to, perhaps, off-the-wall questions on YouTube videos and entrance music.
Name: Ben Swift
Title/Occupation: Software Engineer at opendorse
Age: 27
Hometown: Bristol, Ind.
Current city: Lincoln, Neb.
Twitter: @camarojunkie21
Personal
Title of my autobiography: A glimpse in the life of a sleep deprived programmer.
Thing I can’t live without: Close race between smart phone and laptop with a slight edge given to the smart phone.
Drink of choice: Coke Zero
Last book I read: Sigmund Brouwer’s “Wings of Dawn”
Ultimate road trip snack: Beef jerky
Entrance song if I was a wrestler: “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor
Celebrity doppelgänger: Dwayne Johnson
Guilty pleasure band and/or film: I occasionally indulge in movies from the 80’s. Most recently would be WarGames.
Chosen career in an alternate reality: Test driver for Motor Trend magazine.
Worst OCD tendency: Trying to get every strand of cat hair off of my shirt.
Quote I might have said: “The Internet is just a fad… it won’t last”
Which actor or actress, and why: Liam Neeson because he trained Batman and Obi-Wan. He is both Zeus and Aslan and he also punches wolves.
Favorite YouTube video: Bad lip reading
Thanks to our sponsor
Local
Best place in Lincoln no one knows about: King Kong, best gyros ever.
Lincoln’s obligatory tourist stop: Ivanna Cone. If you enjoy amazing homemade ice cream then you cannot pass up a visit to Ivanna Cone.
One thing Lincoln has that other Silicon Prairie cities don’t: The most insane college football fans I have ever seen.
Best thing going for Lincoln’s startup community: There are a lot of people who are extremely supportive of local startups and invested in keeping good talent and great ideas in the Midwest.
Last local restaurant I ate at: Lazlo’s Brewery
Best meal I’ve had in Lincoln: Leadbelly’s Raspberry Beret Burger (jerked ginger peanut butter, jalapeno raspberry jam, smoked candied bacon, lettuce, red onion).
Lincoln would be better if… it had better parking solutions (especially during football season).
The Startup Scene
Social media pet peeve: Invites to play weird games or download random apps.
App I’m obsessed with: Feedly. It gives me all the news I care about and none that I don’t.
Silicon Prairie startup crush: Have to show some love to Rex Lamb and ComplyTrax. I’ve had the privilege of being involved in the initial development phase of ComplyTrax and working with Rex. It’s provided me with the ability to learn and grow both personally and professionally.
Most comfortable startup T-shirt I own: That would have to be our very own opendorse shirts. My colleagues and I made sure we got some nice ones to wear around the office.
Something most people don’t know about me: I sleep with a loaded .45 1911 next to my bed. Intruders beware.
Entrepreneur I most want to grab a drink with: Blake Lawrence… (co-founder of opendorse) I’ve never met anyone with as many stories as this guy!
I do what I do because… I enjoy problem solving on a programming level and I also love the fact that we are able to solve a major problem in the digital endorsement industry. We are effectively able to change the way people approach and think about digital endorsements.
Before I was in startups… I was a network administrator that did some programming on the side. I worked in a corporate environment and had to wear a tie to work every day. It is definitely an extremely different environment than the startup world that’s for sure.
If money wasn’t an object, my next company would be… a custom auto repair shop specializing in the restoration of vintage muscle cars. My dad is a mechanical engineer and has owned a plethora of muscle cars, as well as building a couple from scratch, and he has definitely passed on this passion for horsepower and burnt rubber onto me.
The Silicon Prairie startup scene is missing… a frozen yogurt shop on every corner. No one dislikes frozen yogurt.
In five years, I’ll… probably be ruling the world.
In five years, the Silicon Prairie… will be exploding with even more talented and brilliant startups than ever before!
