The earliest PCs had IBM’s name on the outside but there was no IBM on the inside.  And what I saw was that not only did it take an enormous amount of time for the components to get from the people who made them all the way to the customer, but it was a very inefficient and expensive process.  So I would read about improvements in technology in Byte magazine, but then it would take a year or more before you could actually buy it. So I was kind of a frustrated consumer, thinking, “Hey, where is all this stuff that I keep reading about?” and kind of thought, “Well gee, what if you could sell directly to the end customer and do it way more efficiently with better service?” — the people who really knew about the product.  Now, I had no idea this thing called the Internet would come along and make it real easy for people to buy things online and connect, but absolutely felt that over time more and more people would be knowledgeable enough to buy on the phone.