Carmack’s parents divorced when he was four years old and he was brought up by his grandmother. Bullied at school, where he had skipped a year ahead, he buried himself in books, chiefly science fiction. At the age of 10, he was introduced to computers and quickly learned how to program and just two years later sold a game called StarBurst. He took on two majors at the University of Pennsylvania, in Physics and Economics, supplementing his living selling marijuana to the richer students, and complex financial algorithms to the hedge fund geeks out of the city. Moving to California Carmack grafted himself into a number of startups, focusing on fincoms and studiously exiting at the first opportunity, to build an ever wider network of holdings. As his wealth and reputation grew, his true passion, space travel, revealed itself in his new fund VentureSpace. Seed funding multiple start-ups in the gathering space race, he bet on all the horses, and once the first company successfully secured a sizable military contract, he pounced, secretly buying out several shareholders and taking control. As a market maker in the hedge-fund space, with his legendary algorithms mining ever more exotic financial margins, Carmack’s wealth grew faster than even he could keep track, the Patricians came a courting. Eventually, and reluctantly, more out of curiosity than belief, Carmack joined the illustrious group.
