(To mark the Cheltenham Festival, I tried to find an interesting "racing" fact. A starting gate (aka called a starting barrier or starting stalls) is a machine used to ensure a fair start to a race in horse and dog racing.
Mr Puett died in 1998, but his company still builds them.
The idiom, "First out of the [starting] gate", means someone is the first to do something that others are trying to do. So, I guess he was first out of the gate.)