The local tech community is mourning the sudden death of a rising star software developer. This last week, Ian Preston, 19-years-old, tragically took his own life according to his father Stuart Preston. “This was totally unexpected and we did not see it coming,” Stuart said in our interview. No additional details were released. Ian fell in love with programming at age seven, Stuart said, and by age nine, he was already writing programs. “We weren’t sure if [the programs] were real” or some gibberish, but it was real, Stuart said. Ian was home-schooled and during that time he wrote a program to help other home-schooled children teach themselves math. “He put [the program] on a CD and sent it to his friends,” Stuart said. Ian continued to digest book after book about programming and teach himself code. At age fifteen, Ian decided he wanted to intern with a local software company and ultimately ended up at Axosoft in 2012. “It was a dream for him,” Stuart said. Following this experience, Ian briefly worked on game development at Benerino Studios. In 2013, Ian returned to Axosoft and to date was the company’s youngest full-time hire. During a 30-day Axosoft challenge, Pure Chat, a live chat software platform for small businesses, was born, and Ian was named CEO during the project. “It was a real honor for him,” Stuart said. Pure Chat launched in 2012 and is now a thriving startup in the Arizona ecosystem. It wasn’t long until Ian’s talent was known around…
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