From 1998-2000 I wrote for The Motley Fool. Unfortunately, sometime after I stopped writing for them they crippled their website so you have to register to view any of their content. It's pretty easy to get around: if the "referrer" field is from fool.com it'll give you a login page, so links from outside work but following links within the site doesn't. So here are links to the material that should work, and if not archive.org should have it.

Starting in 1997 I used to post on the Motley Fool's message boards a lot. That's how I got into writing for them. My login handle was "oak" (both because it was the original name of Sun's Java project, and from the Nancy button "Every mighty oak was once a nut that stood its ground." My first post was May 19, 1997 (although you can't read that one without logging in), and I kept posting fairly often for a couple years. Here's where one of my posts was selected post of the day.

How did a computer geek like me get involved in that? I posted on their message boards a lot, and they recruited me as a writer from there. How did I get involved with them at all? Well, one day in 1997 I was bored enough to type random words into the web browser to see what came up (potato.com was then unclaimed, fruit.com was the "fruit of the loom" clothing company, and fool.com was The Motley Fool's brand new website, right after they diversified out of AOL). I'd seen them on the cover of newsweek, and started reading. Around the same time I also read a biography of Warren Buffett in my local library. I'd always been interested in paying off debt and saving money, and a table in the Buffett book renewed my respect for compound interest. This got me interested in investing.