The man behind the BlackBerry idea

Geoff Goodfellow is the unknown inventor who first came up with idea of wireless email. Now he's happy being a DJ and finding the nexus between tech and entertainment.

GEOFF GOODFELLOW is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who came up with an idea that resulted in a $612.5 million payday. But he will never see a penny of it. He remains little known even in Silicon Valley and, perhaps most surprising, he doesn't really mind.

And herein lies one of the stranger tales about innovation and money in the world of technology.

A high-school dropout, Mr. Goodfellow had his light-bulb moment in 1982, when he came up with the idea of sending electronic mail messages wirelessly to a portable device — like a BlackBerry. Only back then, there was no BlackBerry; his vision centered on pagers. He eventually did get financial backing to start a wireless e-mail service in the early 1990's, but it failed.

So, in 1998, he moved to Prague and bought a bar.

More at NYTimes.com