Steve Wareham

Greenville, SC. Former banker. Current founder, writer, editor, host. Spent a decade inside a regional bank, took a layoff like a starter pistol, and built a consulting practice out of a hotel lobby. Now runs AvoTech, GreenvilleReels, and LastGoonie — and writes under his own byline until the rest of the Goonies show up.

I worked inside a big bank for most of my adult life. I know how money actually moves — the real plumbing, not the marketing version. Retail and commercial, branches and pipelines, the difference between a number on a screen and a decision that changes somebody's week. I was good at it. The bank was done with me anyway.

The layoff came. I took the evening front desk at the Grand Bohemian Lodge while I went back to school for web development. Hotel polo by night, syllabus by day. Two career changes in the same apron.

That's where I met Simon Donoghue — the lobby pianist. Scotsman by origin, Greenville's by choice, thirty-plus years into a career as an independent artist. He'd sit down between check-ins and play, and in the quiet stretches we figured out we were drafting the same blueprint from different sides. He was trying to build a career as an artist in a city that had plenty of pianos and not enough pianists who understood the rooms they sat in. I was trying to turn a pivot into a practice.

Then the email came. Simon's website platform — the drag-and-drop kind, the one where the renewal invoice does the talking — had doubled his price. The answer was pay us or lose it all. He showed me the email at the desk. I told him I could do it. Not because I was ready, exactly, but because I was ready enough.

That was the day AvoTech started. It just didn't have a name yet.

AvoTech is a consultancy now — five active sites, a proper stripe pipeline, a design system, and a client list that starts with a Scottish pianist and works outward. I built greenvillepianoguy.com first, then kept going. GreenvilleReels is our editorial platform — a cultural media network for the Upstate, built the way old magazines used to be built. LastGoonie is where my own writing lives, and where the rest of the Creative Collective will land as they show up.

I sit between finance and tech. That's the unfair advantage. Banking taught me what moves money; programming taught me what moves everything else. Put those together — add a GPU, a home server, and a week's worth of Claude Code — and you get a one-person shop that ships like a team and charges like it respects everyone's time.

• I build websites that outlast the fad that spawned them.
• I read the room. Every project starts with listening to the room it's going to sit in — the industry, the client, the reader on the other side of the screen.
• I write when writing is the right tool. The Disruption Series (six essays under /writing/) is my case for why the corporation is losing and the polymath is winning.
• I ship Fintech consulting when the project actually benefits from someone who's lived inside a bank. Not when it doesn't.
• I co-sign other builders. Simon in the lobby. Molly on the stage. The next Goonie when they knock.

Here's the part that doesn't show up on the resume. I'd make a great podcast guest. I'd make a better host. I improvise fast. I can move between comedy and drama without changing gears. I haven't been on a stage since high school — never had the invitation — but I've never had stage fright either. The nerve was always there. The room just hadn't shown up yet.

Which is, for the record, a big reason LastGoonie is building its own rooms.

Two words hold everything together: built different.

Different just to be different is noise. The world has plenty of noise. It needs this kind of different — pay attention to the room you're in, reciprocate the attention you've been paid, show up for other people's work before you expect them to show up for yours. That's a civic discipline as much as a marketing one, and most places don't run this way anymore. The big ones can't. The small ones won't. I think it's how small places beat big ones in the long run, and I think I can prove it one site, one essay, one pianist, one Monday newsletter at a time.

Built different. The kind of different the world needs.

Save the Goondocks. Save the world.

Greenville, SC. A desk in my own house. A home server rack. A coffee routine. A wife who tolerates the amount of furniture I've rearranged this year. A daughter in New York who is the best reason I've ever had to keep the lights on.

• pre-2023
  Truist (and predecessor banks)· Retail banking / commercial pipeline

  Decade-plus inside a regional bank. Learned how money actually moves. Then the layoff.

• 2023
  Grand Bohemian Lodge (Kessler Collection)· Evening front desk

  Hotel polo by night, web-dev syllabus by day. Two career changes in the same apron.

• 2023 — present
  AvoTech Consulting· Founder · Principal

  Started the day Simon showed me the renewal email. Grew from one rescued pianist site into a 5-site portfolio and a FinTech consulting practice.

• 2026 — present
  LastGoonie· Editor · Goonie #01

  The Disruption Series (six essays) became the opening volume. Now pivoting to a multi-voice Creative Collective and podcast imprint.

• Full-stack web development (HTML/CSS/JS, Python, PHP)
• Brand identity & creative direction
• FinTech consulting (retail banking + commercial pipeline)
• Agentic AI systems (Claude Code, MCP servers, Ollama)
• Python systems engineering (FastAPI, Docker, trading infra)
• Editorial writing & essay longform
• Podcast hosting & guesting — comedy or drama, no stage fright
• Improvisation (live, on-camera, on-mic)
• Site performance + SEO hardening
• Client relationship management
• Live event & hospitality (lobby-era Grand Bohemian Lodge)