Congressman Troy Downing is currently serving his first term as the United States Representative for Montana’s Second Congressional District. We recently had the opportunity to catch up with him and discuss his experience so far. The following are excerpts from our conversation. What inspired you to pursue public service? To answer that, I would need to start with my beginnings. I was the unplanned pregnancy of an unwed teenage mom. She worked in the local grocery store and did her best to provide for us. She didn’t have family to lean on for support, so growing up, I often went home to an empty house. I don’t say that as a negative; I actually see that as a positive. When kids grow up that way, they develop a different set of survival skills. If you wanted something, you had to work for it. You had to figure things out on your own. And I did. I ended up attending New York University (NYU), which proved challenging for someone with limited financial means. I used to spend hours in the library, going through big phone CATCHING UP WITH CONGRESSMAN Troy Downing books of scholarships, applying to every one that I possibly could. I took out student loans, worked hard and did everything I possibly could to eke through. I ended up being successful and was hired at New York University as a research scientist at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Later on, I was hired as a teacher in the Computer Science Department at the NYU Institute of Technology. For a poor kid growing up with nothing, I had made it. So, what did I do? I quit. My mom was so confused, I remember her saying, “What do you mean you quit?” I told her that I was going to launch a startup company. Long story short, that startup company ended up merging with a nascent Yahoo, and it changed my life. The next thing you know, I’m asking my mom where I can build a house for her. I parlayed that into trying to help others do the same. I did a lot of angel investing in startups and seed-funded about 150 companies. Some of those were really famous failures, and some of them were really famous successes. After a while, I started looking for something different and began 14 MONTANA AUTO DEALER
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