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His Latvian father watched the communists strip away the family's assets, narrowly escaped deportation to Siberia and paid for college by bartering his cigarette rations.
August Grasis III, or "Augie," knows something about lessons.
His dad, August Grasis, is 80 now. He is refurbishing an apartment building in Latvia these days - the same one the Soviets took from the family in the 1940s.
Lesson No. 1: Keep the paperwork.
"It's a business-oriented family," August Grasis said.
Augie Grasis is a third-generation entrepreneur who today is CEO and cofounder of one of Kansas Cit3es most successful post-dot-com-bust technology startups. Grasis said he has Handmark Inc. positioned to emerge victorious in the suddenly burgeoning wireless gaming and software business - a bet he laid down right after the Nasdaq crashed in March 2000.
"It's not that I have some blind faith that everything's going to be OK," Grasis said. "I really believe that we built a company on good strong business principles going after a strong market."
He's not ashamed to have fun doing so.
In the summer, Grasis grew out his hair with no real style in mind. The bleached-blond coif made him look more like an Allman Brothers roadie than the CEO archetype.
Grasis wasn't letting himself go. He was trying in earnest to win Handmark's "best mullet" contest.
Jesse Devitte, a Handmark co-founder who serves in an advisory role, recalled how Grasis once set up a miniature golf course in three adjacent Las Vegas hotel rooms.
That was his idea of a summit of...