Tom Boutell has been passionate about tech since an early age, and that passion led him on a professional journey that culminated in him becoming the CTO of South Philadelphia-based Apostrophe Technologies, writes Sam Markowitz for Technical.ly.

Boutell describes his role as “25 percent ‘business cat emoji,’ 25 percent ‘software architect,’ 25 percent ‘mentor,’ and 25 percent ‘JavaScript line cook.’”

The mix keeps him busy, and it took some adjustments for him to switch to a leader and manager role.

“For a long time I’ve resisted dialing back my hands-on role as a developer,” he said.

The Germantown resident has more than three decades of experience in the tech field. He started by programming games and coding computer bulletin boards before he became the first developer at RealNetworks.

He later landed a book deal for “CGI Programming in C and Perl,” which prompted him to leave his job and start working for himself. He moved to Philadelphia in 2002 to be closer to his family, where he found a job as a software developer once again.

Apostrophe was spun out of his then-company, P’unk Avenue, in 2019.

Read more about Tom Boutell in Technical.ly.

More about Tom Boutell.