Hey, I’m Burt Lao — IT Director by day, crypto nerd by night, full-stack developer since the floppy disk era, and probably the only guy you know who got nicknamed Bort before The Simpsons made it cool.
I've been building software since 1990, back when a “cloud” was just a thing that blocked your modem signal during a storm. I ran a BBS before the internet went mainstream, which basically makes me a tech dinosaur… but the cool kind, like a T. rex with a mechanical keyboard.
In 2003, I founded Screen Text Software and started outsourcing to the Philippines way before it was trendy. I stumbled into Bitcoin in 2009—not because I was trying to get rich, but because U.S. banks made sending money feel like solving a Rubik’s Cube blindfolded. (Thanks, financial system.)
Fast forward to now: I’m the IT Director at Bishop Amat High School, and I’m still deep in tech—coding, consulting, and building cool stuff in AI and blockchain. One of my favorite side projects is BORT Token, a meme coin with nostalgic flair, Simpsons references, and NFT license plates. Yes, seriously.
Life threw me a few curveballs: I survived an aortic dissection in 2013, a stroke during heart surgery in 2015, and three open-heart surgeries total. Now I live with aphasia, dysarthria, and some brain damage that makes numbers tricky and memory patchy—but hey, I’ve got AI for that.
Even with the challenges, I keep building tools and platforms with one goal: simplicity. My motto? If I can use it on a bad day, anyone can use it on a good one.
Outside of tech, I’m a proud husband to Geraldine and dad to five awesome humans: Angelic, Andrew, Abigail, Aidan, and Asher. We’re basically a startup disguised as a family.
Thanks for stopping by. Let’s connect—and maybe build something weird and wonderful together.