A chief executive officer (CEO), or just chief executive (CE), is the most senior corporate, executive, or administrative officer in charge of managing an organization – especially an independent legal entity such as a company or nonprofit institution. CEOs lead a range of organizations, including public and private corporations, non-profit organizations and even some government organizations. The CEO of a corporation or company typically reports to the board of directors and is charged with maximizing the value of the entity, which may include maximizing the share price, market share, revenues or another element. In the non-profit and government sector, CEOs typically aim at achieving outcomes related to the organization's mission, such as reducing poverty, increasing literacy, etc.
A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable economic model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend to become registered, startups refer to new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo founder. Startups face high uncertainty and have high rates of failure, but a minority of them do go on to be successful and influential. Some startups become unicorns; that is privately held startup companies valued at over US$1 billion.
Korn Ferry is a management consulting firm headquartered in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1969 and as of 2019, operates in 104 offices in 52 countries and employs 8,678 people worldwide. Korn Ferry trades through three business segments: Korn Ferry Executive Search, Korn Ferry Advisory, and Korn Ferry RPO and Professional Search.
Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which have demonstrated high growth. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing risky start-ups in the hopes that some of the firms they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. The start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and they are usually from the high technology industries, such as information technology (IT), clean technology or biotechnology.
A golden handshake is a clause in an executive employment contract that provides the executive with a significant severance package in the case that the executive loses their job through firing, restructuring, or even scheduled retirement. This can be in the form of cash, equity, and other benefits, and is often accompanied by an accelerated vesting of stock options. According to Investopedia, a golden handshake is similar to, but more generous than a golden parachute because it not only provides monetary compensation and/or stock options at the termination of employment, but also includes the same severance packages executives would get at retirement.
A golden parachute is an agreement between a company and an employee specifying that the employee will receive certain significant benefits if employment is terminated. These may include severance pay, cash bonuses, stock options, or other benefits. Most definitions specify the employment termination is as a result of a merger or takeover, also known as "change-in-control benefits", but more recently the term has been used to describe perceived excessive CEO severance packages unrelated to change in ownership.
Anthony Michael Fadell is an American engineer, innovator, designer, entrepreneur, founder, coach, and active investor. The "father of the iPod", he joined Apple Inc. in 2001, served as the Senior Vice President of the iPod division at Apple Inc. and oversaw all iPod hardware, software, and accessories development and iPhone hardware, firmware, and accessories development from March 2006 to November 2008. He is also a co-creator of the iPhone, working on the first three generations of the iPhone. In May 2010, he co-founded Nest Labs, which announced its first product, the Nest Learning Thermostat, in October 2011. Nest was acquired by Google in January 2014 for $3.2B. He resigned from Google in June 2016. Fadell is the Principal at Future Shape, a global investment and advisory firm coaching 200+ startups working on foundational deep technology.
Ramada is a large American multinational hotel chain owned by Wyndham Hotels and Resorts. As of December 31, 2018, it operates 811 hotels with 114,614 rooms across 63 countries under the Ramada brand.
Laurence Douglas Fink is an American billionaire businessman. He is the chairman and CEO of BlackRock, an American multinational investment management corporation. BlackRock is the largest money-management firm in the world with more than $6.5 trillion in assets under management. Although BlackRock is private, its 6.96 trillion dollars in assets and wide range of investments gives the firm enormous power over the global financial system. Activists and economic watchdogs have tried to get BlackRock designated as a systemically important financial institution, which would subject it to the highest legal standards for safety and transparency. In April 2018, Fink's net worth was $1 billion. He is also a lifelong major Democratic donor.
OpenDNS is an American company providing Domain Name System (DNS) resolution services—with features such as phishing protection, optional content filtering, and DNS lookup in its DNS servers—and a cloud computing security product suite, Umbrella, designed to protect enterprise customers from malware, botnets, phishing, and targeted online attacks. The OpenDNS Global Network processes an estimated 100 billion DNS queries daily from 85 million users through 25 data centers worldwide.
A venture round is a type of funding round used for venture capital financing, by which startup companies obtain investment, generally from venture capitalists and other institutional investors. The availability of venture funding is among the primary stimuli for the development of new companies and technologies.
A series A round is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exchange for their investment. It is usually the first series of stock after the common stock and common stock options issued to company founders, employees, friends and family and angel investors.
Vator, Inc. is a community-based website focused on the business of funding and building emerging technologies for startups. Vator operates a database of private-company profiles and a newsroom, covering technology and Internet trends through analysis and interviews. It combines social networking, industry news, and video to organize presentations about business opportunities within an online audience of entrepreneurs and investors. Vator is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with a bureau in Silicon Valley.
Robert Warren Pittman, is an American businessman.
Venture debt or venture lending is a type of debt financing provided to venture-backed companies by specialized banks or non-bank lenders to fund working capital or capital expenses, such as purchasing equipment. Venture debt can complement venture capital and provide value to fast growing companies and their investors. Unlike traditional bank lending, venture debt is available to startups and growth companies that do not have positive cash flows or significant assets to use as collateral. Venture debt providers combine their loans with warrants, or rights to purchase equity, to compensate for the higher risk of default.
Glory, formerly Glory World Series, is an international kickboxing promotion company founded in 2012 by Glory Sports International Pte Ltd. partners Pierre Andurand, Scott Rudmann and Total Sports Asia. The company has its headquarters in Singapore and international offices in Denver, United States, and Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Onevest, formerly Rock The Post, is an investment crowdfunding site for startups where entrepreneurs are able to raise capital from accredited investors. As of July 2014, startups launching on Onevest had collectively raised over $66 million.
Magic Leap, Inc. is an American startup company that released a head-mounted virtual retinal display, called Magic Leap One, which superimposes 3D computer-generated imagery over real world objects, by "projecting a digital light field into the user's eye", involving technologies potentially suited to applications in augmented reality and computer vision. It is attempting to construct a light-field chip using silicon photonics.
Alphabet Inc. is an American multinational conglomerate headquartered in Mountain View, California. It was created through a restructuring of Google on October 2, 2015, and became the parent company of Google and several former Google subsidiaries. The two co-founders of Google continued to remain as controlling shareholders, board members, and employees at Alphabet. Alphabet is the world's fourth-largest technology company by revenue and one of the world's most valuable companies.
Policybazaar, is an Indian insurance aggregator and a global financial technology company based in Gurugram, India. The company was founded in June 2008 by Yashish Dahiya, Alok Bansal and Avaneesh Nirjar. It provides a digital platform - website and app - where users compare financial services from major insurance companies. The startup is headquartered in Gurugram, Haryana, India and is the country's largest insurance aggregator. The group has also expanded operations to the United Arab Emirates.
