About Us
Frank Paolino
A software founder who's spent four decades building things himself.
Some History
Frank started Maysoft at age 24, with no background in computer science. His undergraduate degree was in Chemistry from what's now UMass Lowell, followed by an MBA from the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst in 1982. He lasted less than a year at Colgate-Palmolive before deciding to strike out on his own, and spent the next decade consulting in the early days of personal computing. He automated old, worn processes that "have always been done this way" inside large organizations that were only just beginning to understand what automation was.
I spent my early career bringing computers into businesses that had never touched one — and watched productivity surge and costs fall. Now I'm AI-enabling those same systems, driving another huge leap in productivity and savings.— Frank Paolino
In 2000, he built anti-spam software for the Lotus Notes email system. That product, SpamSentinel, carried his business for the next fifteen years, and it's the reason he can talk credibly about enterprise software, IT constraints, and what it actually takes to keep a piece of infrastructure running.
He's also practiced karate since college, under Sensei Kazumi Tabata. It took him three attempts to pass Tabata's black belt test, a standard that doesn't bend for anyone. If nothing else, it's a fair preview of how he treats a commitment once he's made one.
He's been married since 1989, has four children, and moved from the Boston area to Santa Barbara in 2015 chasing a new adventure.
I Call Myself Iris
A spec for an AI Assistant.
In 2018 he wrote the first draft of a novel built around an Artificial Intelligence that could reason and act the way today's AI tools do — the book that became I Call Myself Iris. He shelved it because nobody would believe that a bot could really do all those things. Then ChatGPT shipped, and he went back and finished it. Frank was thinking seriously about what this technology would be able to do years before most companies started asking the question this audit asks now.
Defeating the Enemy Within
His second book, Defeating the Enemy Within, pulls directly from that experience — the lessons he picked up running a company for two decades, and how he learned to work through the fear that comes with it. If you are someone who has ever grappled with that nagging inner voice whispering “you can’t do this,” this book could be a game-changer. There is a strong emphasis on “jumping in” despite uncertainty, reinforced by the memorable quote, “If you don’t attempt something, you have already failed.”
Frank Paolino has long been one of the most insightful and wholehearted people I know. Defeating the Enemy Within captures the essence of his wisdom—straightforward, encouraging, and grounded in lived experience.
— Jessica Garver, Founder, The Inside-Out Catalyst
Contact
If you want to discuss AI, books, self-doubt, karate or technology, here is where you can find me:
Here are links to the books on Amazon: