The Seed

This journey started long before I was born. My father was a computer engineer, an incredibly talented one. In the late eighties and early nineties, he grew several ideas into successful startup ventures, all from his garage (as is tradition). My brother and I grew up enveloped in that environment, playing and learning in his workspaces.

We launched our first business at age nine, upgrading Dell and Gateway machines to run Windows 2000. We used the profits to go to Disneyland. The learning continued-circuitry in fifth grade (despite our resistance!), and coding lessons through high school. Despite all that programming, I thought I wanted to be a marine biologist!

The Sprout

Fast forward a decade. I went to the University of North Texas for computer engineering and bounced around career fields, from manufacturing to logistics. I always remained a hobbyist engineer, writing scripts to automate tasks at home or where I worked and building side projects with Raspberry Pi kits. I even did some gig work, website building and bug catching, but I remained a script kiddie at best.

My first involvement with artificial intelligence came in 2017. Friends and I hypothesized that we could manipulate training data for a major AI system to achieve a specific outcome. It’s a fascinating story I’m happy to share in person, long story short, we succeeded. From then on, I was hooked. Still, my interest mostly stayed in hobby projects and small gigs… until now.

The Bloom

In my current role as a salesperson for a local staffing firm, I’ve been blessed to visit and build meaningful relationships with many businesses across Deep East Texas. I’ve seen how our companies operate, and I can say East Texas is full of hard‑working, innovative, and industrious people.

However, I’ve noticed a gap. Compared to larger metro areas, Deep East Texas can be slower to adopt new technologies. We see it in historically lower internet connectivity rates (thankfully improving) and a lag in adopting advances over the last 30 years, I even know a well‑known company that didn’t buy its first computer until 2010.

It’s this gap that Acer Texas seeks to address. I’m blessed with the ability to communicate clearly and teach new ideas. Acer Texas exists to demystify emerging AI technologies while guiding business owners and decision‑makers to trustworthy, practical adoption. Our mission is to help the companies of Deep East Texas keep pace with a dynamic ecosystem, without sacrificing the values and foundations their businesses are built on.

We don’t want smooth‑talking salespeople or snake‑oil peddlers to be your first introduction to AI. Instead, Acer Texas, like its namesake, the Japanese maple (Acer Palmatum), is rooted here in East Texas and poised to grow slowly but surely with y’all.

The Next Post

Our next blog post arrives in September and will cover the state of artificial intelligence in Deep East Texas. It will be based on the conversations I have with companies and institutions over the next month. For an in‑depth discussion about your business, or to talk about ours, give us a call or an email.

Happy birthday, Dad.
Henry de Koeyer