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Rob Brunt was having a hard time picking an outfit. He had a meeting to get to and, as a Vancouver police officer, he was often in uniform, which did not seem like a good fit, not for a face-to-face with J (James) Allard, a former mega-star at Microsoft Corp. and the so-called father of the Xbox gaming console.

A suit and tie didn’t seem right either, so Brunt struck what he viewed as a compromise between being too dressy, and not dressy enough, and arrived five minutes early at The Rocky Bottom Brewery in Bellevue, Wash., in a collared shirt, fancy jeans and polished dress shoes.

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“I made sure I got there first,” he said, “and then I see J walking in, and he is wearing a hoodie, torn-up shorts, skater shoes and a ball cap. He was the answer to my prayers.”

Allard is a beer-drinking, pizza-eating, bicycle-loving genius, and the ultimate anti-tech bro, whose nascent post-Microsoft mission, isn’t birthing the next Silicon Valley unicorn, but declaring all-out digital war on bike theft.