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Tom Siebel, founder of Siebel Systems and current CEO of First Virtual Group, recaps a history of the information technology boom, and pronounces it a nearly stagnant sector. He focuses on the burgeoning interests in energy, healthcare, food and water, and other market possibilities to meet the needs of an expanding, aging, and more affluent global population.
Overwhelmed by e-mail? Here are practical tips from entrepreneur Terry Gold on how to "get out from under." Busy business owners take note!
When growth goals and philosophies differed between original partners, the "shotgun" buy-sell agreement allowed for a fair buyout process.
Jack Leslie is the Chairman of Weber Shandwick, one of the world's leading public relations agencies. A veteran communications strategist, he has been an architect of some of the most visible communications campaigns of the last two decades, as well as serving as a high-level strategist for nationwide political campaigns on three continents. Mr. Leslie specializes in helping prominent corporations and public institutions to transform public attitudes rapidly on divisive, high-profile issues. Leslie's dual background as a seasoned communications professional and political operative offers a unique perspective that enables him to integrate advertising, media relations, direct marketing and political strategy. Political and business leaders have sought his counsel during several crises. Mr. Leslie has served as a communications crisis advisor to the NY-NJ Port Authority in the immediate aftermath of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and to American Airlines following the attacks of September 11th; to the Government of Colombia on illegal narcotics; to the State of Florida on the shootings of foreign tourists; and many other foreign and domestic crises. Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, he testified before the House International Relations Committee on U.S. public diplomacy programs directed at the Muslim world. A recognized expert on marketplace and communications challenges facing the health care, pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors, Mr. Leslie is a chief architect of the award-winning communications and advertising campaign for The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and the national campaign for the Council for Biotechnology Information. He was a participant in the Jackson Hole Group, a forum that convened many of the nation's leading thinkers to address the health care crisis in the mid-1990s. Mr. Leslie has advised many leading national and internati
J. Michael Cline is the founding Partner of Accretive LLC. Michael and other Accretive principals founded Exult, Xchanging, Fandango and Accretive Health. Before founding Accretive Michael spent 10 years as General Partner at General Atlantic Partners helping build General Atlantic into the world's largest private investment firm focused on software and related investments. Prior to General Atlantic, Michael was an associate at McKinsey & Company. Michael received his MBA from Harvard Business School where he was a Baker Scholar and he received a BS from Cornell University. He serves on the boards of Accretive Commerce, Fandango, Accretive Health and Willow. He is a Trustee of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) where he chairs the Tigers Forever initiative - the world's largest effort in global tiger conservation and is a Trustee of the Brunswick School. He also serves on the board of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Endeavor Global and the Harvard Business School Rock Center for Entrepreneurship.
Wenceslao Casares founded Lemon Bank (www.lemon.com), a Brazilian retail bank for the poor, in June 2002. He is also the founder of Wanako Games (www.wanakogames.com), a US based developer of console videogames that seeks to leverage the creativity of Latin American talent. Wanako Games was sold to Vivendi Universal. In 1997 Casares founded Patagon (www.patagon.com), an Argentinean Online Brokerage. As the Company expanded throughout Latin America, Casares lived in Sao Paulo, Mexico City, and New York City. The company also expanded into online banking in Spain and Germany. Patagon was sold to Spanish bank Santander. In 1994 Casares launched Internet Argentina S.A. (www.interar.com.ar), the first Internet Service Provider in the country. He then sold that Company, in order to establish Patagon. Casares was born in Patagonia, Argentina. At age 17 he spent a year in Washington, PA as a member of the Rotary International Exchange program. He then attended the University of San Andres (www.udesa.edu.ar), Argentina's top business school; however, he interrupted his studies in order to start Patagon. He was selected as an Endeavor Entrepreneur (www.endeavor.org), an international non-profit organization committed to identifying, supporting and promoting the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders in emerging-markets. And he is an elected member of the World Economic Forum's (www.weforum.org) Global Leaders for Tomorrow (GLT), since 2001. He is also a member of the Young Presidents Organization (www.ypo.org) and has completed the Harvard Business School's Owners and Presidents Management Program. As part of his philanthropic and non-for-profit activities he servers on the board of the Viva Trust (www.vivatrust.com) and has established the Fundacion Sintesis (www.fundacionsintesis) with the goal of inspiring the next generation of social and political leaders in Latin America.
William Sahlman is the Dimitri V. d'Arbeloff - Class of 1955 Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. The d'Arbeloff Chair was established in 1986 to support teaching and research on the entrepreneurial process. The Chair honors the late Dimitri d'Arbeloff (HBS '55), whose entrepreneurial skills helped make Millipore Corporation a world leader in its industry. Mr. Sahlman received an A.B. degree in Economics from Princeton University, an M.B.A. from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in Business Economics, also from Harvard. His research focuses on the investment and financing decisions made in entrepreneurial ventures at all stages in their development. Mr. Sahlman was co-chair of the Entrepreneurship and Service Management Unit from 1999 to 2002. From 1991 to 1999, he was Senior Associate Dean, Director of Publishing Activities, and chairman of the board for Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. From 1990 to 1991, he was chairman of the Harvard University Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility. He is a member of the board of directors of several private companies.
Randy Komisar joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers in 2005 as a partner. For several years prior Randy has partnered with entrepreneurs creating businesses with leading edge technologies. He was a co-founder of Claris Corporation, served as CEO for LucasArts Entertainment and Crystal Dynamics, and acted as a "virtual CEO" for such companies as WebTV, Mirra and GlobalGiving. He was a founding Director of TiVo where he is currently chairman of the Nominating and Governance Committee. Earlier Randy served as CFO of GO Corporation and Senior Counsel for Apple Computer, following a private practice in Technology Law. Randy holds a BA in Economics from Brown University and a JD form Harvard Law School. He is a Consulting Professor of Entrepreneurship at Stanford University and author of the best-selling book The Monk and the Riddle, as well as several articles on leadership and entrepreneurship. Randy frequently speaks here and abroad on such topics.
Andy Freire is Axialent's co-founder and CEO. Entrepreneur in the business and social domains, after working at Procter & Gamble, he founded and led Officenet, a company that revolutionized the industry of distribution (retail) of office supplies in Latin America growing from one to almost a thousand employees in a 4 year span. When he was 18, he created the Fundacion Iniciativa, for the promotion of leadership among the Latin American youth. He collaborates weekly with CNN in Spanish as "Expert Entrepreneur." He was distinguished by the World Economic Forum as "Global Leader for Tomorrow", by the Endeavor Foundation as "Latin American Entrepreneur of the Year" and he was one of two finalists who received awards as "World Young Business Achiever" in the Philippines in 2002. Andy has a Licensure in Economics magna cum laude from the University of San Andres in Buenos Aires, Argentina and an OPM from the Harvard Business School. His several projects got funded by world recognized financial institutions such as GE Capital, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, George Soros, KKR, Santander Bank, Bank of America, Warburg Pincus, Louis Vuitton, GP Investimentos and Tommy Lee Putnam.
Michael Dell is the founder of the computer company Dell, Inc. He created one of the most profitable computer companies in the world with annual sales of up to $50 billion American dollars. Dell has also become one of the wealthiest people in the world with a 4th place listing on the Forbes rich Americans list in 2005 with an estimated worth of $18 billion. Michael Saul Dell was born on the 23rd of February, 1965 in Houston to an orthodontist father and a mother that worked as a money manager. Dell was interested in computers from a very young age and was already pulling them apart at the age of 15. He attended the University of Texas with hopes of becoming a doctor but abandoned studies to start his own business at just 19 years of age. With just one thousand dollars in his pocket Dell started "PC's Limited" in 1984. From his university dorm room Dell started building and selling personal computers from stock computer parts. The idea that set the young entrepreneur apart from others was to sell directly to the customer, rather than going through a third party to sell his products. PC's Limited allowed the customer to customize their computer before it was custom built to their specifications. The prices could also be kept much lower than PC's Limited's competition as they had no stores to maintain or middlemen to pay commissions to. All computers were sold direct to the customer with the use of order forms, phone orders, and now Internet orders. In 1988 PC's Limited had a name change to "Dell Computer Corporation" and had an initial public offering (IPO) that valued the company at roughly $80 million. By 1992 Dell Computer Corporation was listed on the Fortune 500 list of the five hundred largest companies in the world, making Michael Dell the youngest ever CEO to head a Fortune 500 company. The company continued to grow and expand dramatically year after year, eventually selling more c
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