Tom Dickson is from San Francisco. He graduated from BYU in 1971 and moved back home with the intentions of signing up for the National Guard. His degree was in manufacturing engineering and he landed a job with Alza, one of the inventors of the birth control pill.
Tom had always had an interest in bread making and that hobby led him to start a business called Harvest House Food & Grains. He specialized in creating safer packaging for wheat. One day he spilled some grain and found that when he sucked it up with his vacuum, it acted as a wheat grinder. That was the beginning of the Magic Mill which would later lead him to make blenders and starting Blendtec.
The company has continued to grow since then, leading Tom and his team of engineers to come up with many variations of the home blender and turning him into an internet celebrity through the “Will It Blend?” YouTube series.