categories
HOT TOPICS
- The Accelerator Conundrum
- The Startup Velocity Question
- Platform as a Service
- Man and Superman
- Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)
- The Future: End of Capitalism
- Capitalism 2.0
Role Model Interview
Turning Around LeapFrog: CEO Jeff Katz (Part 4)
SM: While you were doing Orbitz, did you already join the board of LeapFrog? JK: No, I joined the board in April of 2005. SM: How did they find you? JK: Leapfrog had been in the process of restructuring its board of directors, moving from insider directors to independent directors. They were looking for somebody
Pioneering Video Conferencing: Polycom CEO Bob Hagerty (Part 5)
SM: You do serve the mid market, extensively. BH: We do. Below the strategic’s we have global accounts. Our solution is better than being somewhere in person, and that is a nice mantra. You want people to be productive when they are not in the same place. That is fundamentally our market. You have to
Turning Around LeapFrog: CEO Jeff Katz (Part 3)
SM: Was Saber under American Airlines or on its own? JK: Saber, by that time, was a public company. It was not controlled by American Airlines anymore. The Chief Financial officer at United had the idea that the airline industry needed to form its own competitor to Travelocity and Saber, otherwise the industry would be
Pioneering Video Conferencing: Polycom CEO Bob Hagerty (Part 4)
SM: What were some of the major milestones in building the company from $37 Million to $682 Million a year? BH: Founding the company, what Brian and Jeff did was important. They had a great creative design. That is not the exact design we introduced, but close. You would know if you saw the original
Pioneering Video Conferencing: Polycom CEO Bob Hagerty (Part 3)
SM: Sounds like an early version of WebEx! BH: It was a little different since WebEx is sharing files on a PC and this was displaying it in a conference room. WebEx was also a lot more successful than we were with that device. The audio conferencing grew and the company was profitable. SM: You
Turning Around LeapFrog: CEO Jeff Katz (Part 2)
SM: The Airlines had huge optimization problems. JK: They really did. In fact, there was a huge optimization problem on every front; how to set capital, prices, routes, seats, everything. I joined American Airlines in 1980, and over the course of 17 years at American Airlines I got sucked from one role to the next.
Turning Around LeapFrog: CEO Jeff Katz (Part 1)
SM: Jeff, let’s start with your background. Where do you come from, where did you go to school, and how did you get into technology? I know that you went to MIT, and I have to say that it is a pretty good school! JK: Of course! We always referred to Harvard as the best
Pioneering Video Conferencing: Polycom CEO Bob Hagerty (Part 2)
SM: What happened after Ampex? BH: I wanted to take more of a risk so I went to a small startup called Conner Peripherals. There was an article in Fortune about us being the fastest to the fortune 500. You have to look at them in quarters because a year was just too fast. I
