Halsey Minor has seen it all. He made millions founding tech legends like CNET and building salesforce.com Inc. in the 1990s.
He then withdrew from the world plagued by a severe bout of depression, which took him six years to overcome.
He ended up losing his fortune when he declared bankruptcy in 2013. Since then rumors abound how he could have lost hundreds of millions of dollars.
In this exclusive and in-depth interview, Halsey Minor for the first time tells Epoch Times why he really had to declare bankruptcy, how he beat the disease that killed his father, and how he came out stronger at the end—in a powerful story of transformation.
So I was within 30 minutes of where he was and so I pledged to myself when I went through depression that I would never do to my kids what my father did to me. Now I have a lot more appreciation for him.
I used to be very resentful but I now know what he went through. He suffered his whole life. It was a different time, but he was very successful. He went to the University of Virginia, he played football, he was on an academic scholarship, he became a doctor. But he was fighting depression his whole life.
Epoch Times: So it was your own depression, which led to your declaring bankruptcy?
Mr. Minor: I was basically doing the same stuff I was doing at anytime. But I had no ability to manage my life.
I didn’t show up in court. Anybody that’s been through really severe depression, they know. The ironic thing is that I feel I’m far stronger because I beat something my father didn’t beat.
I see all of the positives. I’ve shown my kids that no matter what happens you can get back up, you can get going, and you can be successful again.
And hopefully I’ve shown people in general, even if you get knocked down and get knocked down hard, you can get back up and you can be successful again.
I hope part of my story is inspirational for people, because I was very successful and then it was cataclysmic, in very every regard: financially, personally.
But here I am today starting my most important company ever. Hopefully my story resonates with people who’ve gone through or are going to go through something similar to what I went through.
People don’t talk about it. I think it’s something people should talk about.
Epoch Times: So all of the ventures you were busy with, like the horses, the estate in Virginia, and the hotel would have turned out better if you had been captain of your ship?
Mr. Minor: Who knows. The reality is, I turned my life over to lawyers, I had no involvement in my life.
The horses I owned actually ended up being sold for a profit. So people want to go look at those things because they want to find reasons and I never gave any.
I never talked to the press so I never gave anybody any reason. I let people fabricate their own reasons for why it all happened. And I was a nonparticipant in my life. I didn’t talk to people; I didn’t explain what was going on in my life.
When you go through [depression], you’re out. You don’t want to, you don’t care about anything, right?
I cared about coming out the other side of it. I started eating right I started exercising I did everything I possibly could. I’m way healthier now than I ever would’ve been had I not in fact been through this.
So I’ve been very focused on doing everything I could, giving my body every chance to emerge.
None of [the ventures were] the reason [for declaring bankruptcy]. It really was a fight with banks and those fights resulted in assets being frozen and not being able to be sold.
If you took the legal component out, it would’ve been a rough ride but it would’ve been fine. I would’ve been perfectly capable of handling all of my affairs and maybe even coming out stronger.
Epoch Times: How did this process influence you founding your new company, Uphold [previously Bitreserve]
Mr. Minor: I wasn’t really mentally in a place to do anything about it then, but I thought a lot about it. When I emerged in 2012 and I had really emerged from this dark place of being in severe, utterly painful depression, it was the first thing I wanted to do. What I did end up doing was filing bankruptcy in March of 2013 and started this company the next month.
You can’t choose your path in life and sometimes a path is chosen for you that you would not choose for yourself, but it has enormous benefits anyway.
After having gone through that, it gave me insight into what I hope from a business standpoint is the most important thing I'll ever do. It never would’ve happened if I had not gone through this.
The company would never had happened, my insights wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t be building it.
Trust no longer being a part of a financial institution, it being verifiable transparency, it all came from that experience.
It would be great if our lives could always be daisies and roses from one end to the other, but sometimes it’s not. But what I do as an entrepreneur is I take my experiences and I use them.
I took that experience and I used it, hopefully in the most profound way that I’ve used any experience in my life.
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