WESTON — Basement and garage startups are baked into the mythology of the tech industry, and one such basement in Weston, Ohio has been loaned to 14-year-old Ollie Schroeder.
Jeremy Schroeder, Ollie’s father, made a deal with his son.
“Hey, you get the basement completely cleaned out, and we’ll build some benches down there,” Jeremy said, alluding to making a space to work on computers.
Shortly after making the deal, Jeremy said his son “had that sucker cleaned out and all of the tech stuff moved down there.”
A server rack, some tools and a logo later, the father-son duo launched OJ Tech— where the “O” stands for Ollie and the “J” for Jeremy.
Against the rural normalities of Weston, the OJ logo, an orange overlapped with a glass of orange juice, hangs off the side of the red home with the words “Computer Repair” falling vertically below it.
Out front, Jeremy Schroeder’s nephew rides a bicycle in the street, while Ollie Schroeder pulls apart a computer a few feet underground.
Let’s get to work
In less than 30 seconds the 14-year-old dismantled a computer, showed the machine’s insides.
“I was replacing the bad SSD [Solid State Drive],” Ollie Schroeder said. “One [hard drive] just went bad, and so I just replaced it and installed a new operating system of Windows.”
This fall, Ollie Schroeder will enter high school as a freshman, but with a working knowledge of Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems.
Software is his dad’s side of things, where Jeremy works full-time as a web developer for MadAveGroup, but Ollie likes to blaze his own path on the hardware side of tech.
When people come to Ollie he said it’s usually a simple hardware issue people are afraid of fixing themselves. Converting hard drives to solid state drives, a basic backup maneuver improving speed and resilience of the data, is what Ollie said he gets the most requests for.
“It’s pretty much just like adult Legos,” Ollie said. “Because everything has a specific place, and everything goes in one place, like building an actual desktop computer. Super easy.”
Connecting computers
More challenging for Ollie’s inquisitive mind was managing servers.
In the OJ basement, behind the workspace desk and next to the sump pump, a metal rack holds information accessible to the outside world, two gaming servers for Minecraft, a router and a few data host servers the father and son made functional.
Much of the technology a layman might struggle understanding was bought used from GovDeals, a website that sells old government surplus items, including computers, parts and servers.
A sticker reading “Indiana Family & Social Services Administration,” still is attached to a hard drive in the basement, indicating its origins.
Jeremy Schroeder simplified the website as “Ebay for governments,” and these used parts were enough for Jeremy and his son to cobble together a workable network.
“When you go to OJTech.net [the company website] this is literally talking to that computer right there,” Jeremy Schroeder said, pointing to one of the boxes in the server rack.
Honing skill
For now, Ollie Schroeder is just following his curiosity and making a quick buck here or there.
“Last year, we did like $5,000,” his father said, and mentioned they had done some work for Monnette’s Market for their deli queue system this year. Because of that work, Jeremy Schroeder said they might do around $15,000 this year, which is a good start for the teenager who already has a good handle on what he might want to do in the future.
On the docket for the almost high-schooler is making a 10gb ethernet.
This next school season, Ollie will begin his studies at PENTA Career Center, studying IT. He then plans on going to Owens Community College, followed by a bachelor’s degree in IT or server maintenance at the University of Cincinnati.
Learn more about the father son duo on their website and Facebook page.
