I created an IVR scripting language back when premium-rate billing was in its heyday. We were in a very successful business (so successful that we didn't need

I created an IVR scripting language back when premium-rate billing was in its heyday. We were in a very successful business (so successful that we didn't need a salesperson). Our Achilles heel was that we were dependent on a company for our IVR language. I asked why we hadn't written our own and was told that they guy who wrote it was really smart and took 2 years to bring it into existence. I decided to try to work out a proposed architecture on a pad of paper during a transcontinental flight. I created a mockup simulator that seemed to work and then borrowed some hardware to see if there were any problems. There weren't any that weren't quickly fixable. I brought in my language to my company's owners, who told me they were going to buy the language they used for $300,000. I told them they could have mine for free.