Jeff Yablon Bio

Rent-A-Dad is a Labor of Love

The Official “Corporate Bio” for Jeff Yablon is below. It’s interesting but not much fun. So here’s ‘the good stuff:

 In 2018, Rent-A-Dad was born when Jeff Yablon reached a point in his life where he was ok doing what mattered to him, rather than chasing the almighty buck. Go Figure.

Jeff’s backstory and what led to this is … a lot. His Mom died when he was young. He had a mostly-uninvolved and mostly-disinterested father growing up. Jeff has three sons of his own but in the wake of an unfriendly divorce saw his previously-very-involved relationship with them reduced to … not enough. The boys are adults now and the relationships have been worked on, but … Jeff decided he really likes how it feels to be helpful to people in the kind of way that really great Dads are. Hello, Rent-A-Dad!

By lending a hand and offering my services through Rent-a-Dad, I feed my personal need to feel useful while putting my existing skill set to work by helping people. Because whether it’s a bootstrapped startup or a college freshman living on their own for the first time, everyone has too much stuff on their plate.

I build flat-pack furniture. I provide ad-hoc technology help. I negotiate leases and loans for people who feel like they need a hand but not in the same way they get from their lawyers when that’s in play. 

I’ve stood in at events like parent-teacher conferences—and Rent-a-Dad has even walked brides down the aisle!

No matter what the job is, when I help someone out and can take something off their plate, it makes me happy! 

Rent-A-Dad clients run the gamut from very young to pretty darned old. But many of them have something in common. For many jobs my clients could probably pick up the phone or go online and hire some random guy to do the job, but they come to Rent-a-Dad for the feeling that comes along with it!

Rent a Dad is kind of a do-over for me on a personal level, so at the end of the day, it not only satisfies my client’s needs—it satisfies me on a lot of levels.

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Jeff Yablon’s “official” Bio:

People thought Jeff was a computer geek until he started pointing out that he was never really a geek at all, although he did perform a radio program as The Computer Answer Guy in the late 90s and brought that persona to CBS Television’s Up To The Minute national news program.

Reality? Over a long and varied career, Jeff exhibited a talent for translating geek to business and speaking business with geeks.

At the turn of the millennium, Jeff sold his equity positions in Denver-based Planet Computer Inc. and San Francisco’s PlusMedia Broadcasting, both of which operated using business models designed by him and implemented under his direct supervision. Doing business as PlanetUplink, Planet Computer was one of the first Application Service Providers, while PlusMedia produced and distributed news and entertainment programming via the internet, broadcast radio, and television.

Introduced in 2004, PC-VIP is the way Jeff took nearly twenty years of experience and made computers work better for people.

A renowned educational speaker and broadcaster, software author, and business development expert, Mr. Y has worked in concert with senior management of companies large and small to craft and deploy strategies for implementing and merging technology and business processes for employees and customers.

During his two elected terms as President of the Computer Press Association, Jeff authored ethics standards for the journalism community, and created guidelines for accrediting electronic journalists that were implemented by virtually the entire technology tradeshow industry.

Jeff wrote for International Data Group’s PC World Magazine in the mid 1990s, after founding the world’s first electronic publication in 1989; Jeff built IYM Software Review’s reader base to 300,000 through distribution agreements negotiated with CompuServe, America Online, and others. As The Computer Answer Guy™Jeff pioneered techniques for delivering advertising to listeners via streaming media, and maximizing its impact.

Jeff is also the author of Uninstall for Windows™. Upon its introduction in 1992, UN4WIN gained worldwide acceptance as the best tool for safely and completely removing unwanted software from computers running Microsoft’s Windows® operating system.

An avid home cook/chef and gourmand, Jeff ran a 125-seat full-service bar and restaurant in Montclair NJ in the mid-1980’s. Not-so-secretly, and as a lover of both food and customer service, Jeff misses the restaurant business.

Prior to jumping into technology, Jeff was an independent financial consultant. As a NASD-licensed securities broker, he designed the pension plans of small and medium-sized businesses and advised their executive staffs on maximization of personal investment and insurance portfolios. It was this experience that led Jeff back from the brink of geekdom to the business world.

Jeff studied Economics and Marketing at Dickinson College and Rutgers University.