ABOUT THE COMPANY. Ronin Software publishes useful, timely,
and authoritative business information with a tax, legal and
financial emphasis. We author and publish software programs
with business-oriented content, as well as authoring (by Michael
D. Jenkins) a million-selling series of small business self-help
books for each of the 50 states, which were published by Oasis
Press until 1998, and republished in 1999 as a single book with
state tax and legal information for all 50 states and D.C. chapter
on CD-ROM, entitled Starting and Operating a Business in the
U.S., through Running 'R' Media Group. The print versions of
the books have been out of print for several years, but we have
fully updated and revised the entire series constantly since July,
2005, in electronic book/software format, now published by Ronin
Software. We also began publishing all of the e-books as Kindle
books in 2011 (all are 2011 or 2012 editions).
Several of the state law chapters of these e-books are currently
available for viewing (free) on this website at present. All are
current versions, provided as samples of the kind of information that
is offered in the e-books. Click here to
view any of the state startup guides (not including the "national"
portions of the book series, which are available only by purchase).
In addition to writing books, we served until fairly recently as
the "content provider" (author) of a major software program
published by The Learning Company/Broderbund/Parsons Technology,
under the title Small Business Expert, which was bundled with
their PrintShop line of software (until discontinued, in 2004). We
re-acquired the rights to it in 2004, as well, and it has been
re-published since July, 2005 as the Small Business Advisor,
and is included free as the front-end software that accompanies
each of the "Starting and Operating a Business in ....(State)...."
books for each of the states, currently in 2009 or 2010 editions.
We also publish the highly sophisticated (and addictive) stock
market and corporate financial simulation called Wall Street Raider.
We began publishing the Wall Street Raider program (through our
former book publisher, Oasis Press/PSI Research) way back in 1986,
and have continued to develop and enhance it ever since, as a
Windows program in recent years.
In 1989, we also began publishing the Small Business Advisor
program, an MS-DOS program for which we published quarterly update
releases every calendar quarter, and licensed to all U.S. Small
Business Administration offices for several years, until discontinued
at the beginning of 2001. The current (2010) Windows version has been
integrated into the "Starting and Operating a Business" book series
now, and actually creates (assembles) each customized edition of the
books for the user, from extensive text data files. Seamlessly. All
of which is updated at least once every 12 months.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR. The author of Wall
Street Raider and Small Business Advisor, Michael Jenkins,
is a graduate of Louisiana State University and the Harvard
Law School. His background includes several years practicing
as an economics and financial consultant in D.C. and L.A. with
Economics Research Associates; then as a CPA in Los Angeles and
Newport Beach with Peat, Marwick and Mitchell and later as a tax
partner for several years in the large Bay Area CPA firm of Kimbell,
McKenna and von Kaschnitz, in Alameda, California; and for a long
period he practiced as a tax attorney in San Francisco with the
large law firm of Cooley, Godward, Castro, Huddleson and Tatum, prior
to practicing solo as an attorney/CPA in his own firm in Oakland,
California.
Along the way, he published his first book, Starting and Operating
a Business in California, during a sabbatical in 1980, initially just
as an adjunct to his law practice, but when the California book and similar
editions for Texas and New Mexico became highly successful, he worked in
partnership with the firm of Ernst & Young to develop similar book editions
for all 50 states, which sold over a million copies in the 1980s and 1990s,
as noted above.
In 2010, Mr. Jenkins retired from membership in the California Bar,
after ceasing active CPA practice several years earlier. He continues to
keep the book series up to date and develops and publishes two business
software programs, The Small Business Advisor (legal, tax) and Wall
Street Raider (a financial game and stock market simulation).
An incorrigible bachelor, Mr. Jenkins now resides in a scenic
area of Southern Utah, near Zion and Bryce Canyons and engages
regularly in adrenalin-secreting, slightly insane activities
such as sea kayaking, white-water rafting, mountain biking
and the occasional parachute jump or paragliding misadventure,
for relaxation, terror, and inspiration.
(Oh -- In case you're wondering about our company name,
"Ronin", it's an old Japanese term used to
describe feudal Samurai warriors whose masters had been
killed, and who thus became renegades or mercenaries. We
thought the name aptly described our company, when we began
self-publishing our software as shareware back in 1991. Not
that we are that mercenary, of course....)
Ronin Software relocated in 1998 to the beautiful red
rock canyon country of Southern Utah. ("Utah -- It's
a great place to hide out.")
Click on the e-mail link below to contact us by e-mail.
Or click here to see the owner (the good guy in the white hat), hard at work....(7/98)
For a few mind-altering pictures of some of our local Utah/Arizona
landscape (plus a dash of Moorea, Iceland, Faroe Islands, Shetlands, and
Glasgow), click on any of the following image links
below:
-
- Are we still in Utah, Dorothy? (3/99)
- Swirly View (3/99)
- This here's mine... all mine.... (3/99)
- Uh, what happened to the horses? (1999)
- OK... So I go behind a bush 2 minutes, and my bike's gone...? (Snow Canyon, 1999)
- Trail through idyllic Echo Park (Colorado, 2006)
- Steamboat Rock, Green River, in Echo Park (2006)
- A sublime, lazy day in Echo Park (2006)
- Waist deep in the Big Muddy (Moorea, Tahiti, 2001)
- The far north of Iceland, in summer (2005)
- Braving the elements, at the Guilfoss, Iceland (2005)
- The bustling (Nordic) Faroe Island of Sandoy
- My Viking boat, on Unst, in the Shetlands
- World War memorial, Glasgow, Scotland
- On the trail, with passenger, near Moab, 2004
- Is this Mars? Beam us up, Scotty!
- The good ol' days....Taking a breather at the volleyball court (Cancun, Mexico, 1987)
