Kevin O'Connor | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 4, 1961 |
| Alma mater | University of Michigan |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur & Venture Capitalist |
Kevin O'Connor (born April 4, 1961) is an American entrepreneur and co-founder of Graphiq, [1] a research engine founded in Santa Barbara in 2009. [2] Previously, O'Connor was a co-founder of DoubleClick, an internet advertisement-technology, and founder of O'Connor Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in early stage companies, including COR, 9Star, Surfline, Travidia, Procore and CampusExplorer. [3]
O'Connor was born in Livonia, Michigan, a suburb outside Detroit. [4] A graduate of Detroit Catholic Central High School, O'Connor received his bachelor's degree in 1983 from the University of Michigan. [2]
O'Connor was one of the founders of Cincinnati-based Intercomputer Communications Corporation (ICC), a microcomputer to mainframe inter-connectivity company. [4] When ICC was acquired by Digital Communications Associates in 1992, O'Connor eventually became its Chief Technology Officer and a Vice President of Research and Development. [4]
O'Connor quit DCA in 1995. That year, O'Connor met Chris Klaus who had just started Internet Security Systems (ISS). O'Connor was the initial investor and recruited Tom Noonan to become the CEO. ISS went public in 1999 and was sold to IBM Corp. for $1.4bb in 2006. [5] In late 1995, O'Connor began DoubleClick with Dwight Merriman in O'Connor's basement in Alpharetta, Georgia, eventually moving the company to New York City to be closer to media companies and advertising agencies. [2] They hired Kevin P. Ryan who eventually became the CEO of the company. DoubleClick went public on Nasdaq in 1998. [6] DoubleClick grew to over 2,400 employees in 25 countries though in the great "dot com bust" in 2000/2001 the company downsized to about 1,200 employees and in the process became very profitable. [7] In 2005 the company was sold to private equity firm Hellman & Friedman for approximately $1.1 billion. [8] In 2007, Google announced its intention to acquire DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. [9]
O'Connor is also co-author of the book The Map of Innovation: Creating Something Out of Nothing ( ISBN 1400048311), which was published in 2003.
He runs the venture capital firm ScOp Venture Capital, where he invests in early-stage software companies which including Well Health, Surfline, HG Insights, and Procore Technologies. [10]
One of his past ventures, Graphiq, is what O'Connor has described as a "research engine," essentially a search engine that lets consumers compare everything from colleges to cell phones. The company, based in Santa Barbara, California, experienced a revenue jump from $65,000 in 2011 to $6.8 million in 2013, a 10,298.5 percent increase. [11] In 2017, O’Connor sold Graphiq to Amazon. [12]
In 2013, O'Connor committed $1 million of his personal fortune to fight a patent infringement lawsuit brought by Lumen View Technology, a non-practicing entity, commonly referred to as a "patent troll" by patent-reform advocates. Lumen View's patent was invalidated in court, and a federal judge went on to award FindTheBest its court costs. “Businesses shouldn’t have to deal with this,” O’Connor said, explaining his decision to pay out-of-pocket to fight the lawsuit in court, rather than settle for a likely much smaller amount. “A shell company should not be able to send a boilerplate demand letter, alleging infringement on a patent that is invalidated when challenged in court. Let companies focus on innovating and creating American jobs.” [13]
In 2018, O'Connor was awarded the Venky Narayanamurti Entrepreneurial Leadership Award presented by the UC Santa Barbara College of Engineering. [14]
{{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help)Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneurs in over 900 ventures, including America Online, Amazon.com, Tandem Computers, Compaq, Electronic Arts, JD.com, Square, Genentech, Google, Netscape, Sun Microsystems, Nest, Palo Alto Networks, Synack, Snap, AppDynamics, and Twitter. By 2019 it had raised around $9 billion in 19 venture capital funds and four growth funds.
Micron Technology, Inc. is an American producer of computer memory and computer data storage including dynamic random-access memory, flash memory, and USB flash drives. It is headquartered in Boise, Idaho. Its consumer products, including the Ballistix line of memory modules, are marketed under the Crucial brand. Micron and Intel together created IM Flash Technologies, which produced NAND flash memory. It owned Lexar between 2006 and 2017.
DoubleClick Inc. was an American advertisement company that developed and provided Internet ad serving services from 1995 until its acquisition by Google in March 2008. DoubleClick offered technology products and services that were sold primarily to advertising agencies and mass media, serving businesses like Microsoft, General Motors, Coca-Cola, Motorola, L'Oréal, Palm, Inc., Apple Inc., Visa Inc., Nike, Inc., and Carlsberg Group. The company's main product line was known as DART, which was intended to increase the purchasing efficiency of advertisers and minimize unsold inventory for publishers.
Blackstone Inc. is an American alternative investment management company based in New York City. Blackstone's private equity business has been one of the largest investors in leveraged buyouts in the last three decades, while its real estate business has actively acquired commercial real estate across the globe. Blackstone is also active in credit, infrastructure, hedge funds, secondaries, growth equity, and insurance solutions. As of May 2024, Blackstone has more than US$1 trillion in total assets under management, making it the largest alternative investment firm globally.
Ronald Terry Burr is an American Internet and media entrepreneur, based in Los Angeles, CA. He is the holder of nine internet patents and the co-founder and original chief executive officer of NetZero. During his career he has created over $1 Billion in value for shareholders. Burr was named by InfoWorld as one of the Top 50 IT executives at xSP's, by Interactive Week as one of the 25 Top Unsung Hero's of the Net and was a finalist for Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year award. Burr was also the chief executive officer of online advertising company WebVisible, Inc. until its closure in 2011 due to unpaid debts.
Kevin P. Ryan is an American investor and entrepreneur who has founded several New York–based businesses, including Gilt Groupe, Business Insider and MongoDB. Ryan helped grow DoubleClick from 1996 to 2005, first as president and later as CEO. Ryan continues to found and invest in companies through AlleyCorp, a venture capital firm he founded with Dwight Merriman in 2008. He holds a B.A. from Yale University and an M.B.A. from INSEAD.
Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is an American venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional operating funds in London, India and China.
Hellman & Friedman LLC (H&F) is an American private equity firm, founded in 1984 by Warren Hellman and Tully Friedman, that makes investments primarily through leveraged buyouts as well as growth capital investments. H&F has focused its efforts on several core target industries including media, financial services, professional services and information services. The firm tends to avoid asset intensive or other industrial businesses. H&F is based in San Francisco, with offices in New York and London.
DFJ Frontier is an American venture capital firm with offices in Los Angeles, Sacramento, and Santa Barbara, California as well as Portland, Oregon. The firm invests in seed and early-stage technology companies on the West Coast, initially funding companies with between $100,000 and $1 million. The firm has approximately $80 million under management in two funds, DFJ Frontier Fund I, LP and DFJ Frontier Fund II, LP. DFJ Frontier typically leads the first round of investment, with one of its partners serving on the board of the portfolio company.
Atomico is a European Venture Capital firm headquartered in London, with offices in Paris, Berlin and Stockholm. Its founder and CEO is Niklas Zennström, a serial entrepreneur who co-founded Skype and Kazaa.
Paul Chen is a Canadian entrepreneur based in Toronto, founder of two technology companies, FloNetwork and Fortiva.
Dwight Merriman is an American Internet executive, racing driver, and entrepreneur in New York City's Silicon Alley. Best known for co-founding DoubleClick with Kevin O'Connor and serving as its CTO for 10 years, Merriman currently serves on the Board of Directors of MongoDB Inc., where he was previously cofounder and chairman.
Cvent Holding Corp. is a Tysons Corner, Virginia-based company that provides software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions for meetings, events, and hospitality management. Their web-based platform caters to in-person, virtual, and hybrid events, offering functionalities like online registration, venue selection, event management tools, and attendee engagement features. Cvent also provides software for hotels and venues to manage group bookings, including corporate travel, and source new group business. Previously a public company, Cvent was acquired by investment firm Blackstone Inc. for $4.6 billion in June 2023.
Graphiq is a semantic technology company that uses artificial intelligence to rapidly create interactive data-driven infographics. Its intent is similar to Wolfram Alpha which is designed to provide users with direct information on a variety of subjects rather than going through a search engine.
Michael W. Ferro Jr. is an American businessman and tech entrepreneur, founder of Click Commerce and Higi, as well as several other companies including Merrick Ventures, a Chicago-based private equity firm. From February 2016 to March 2018, he was the non-executive chairman of Tribune Publishing, one of the largest newspaper publishers in the United States.
Daniel Conrad Engel is an American CEO and entrepreneur who has worked in the e-commerce and software industries since 1997. Engel led customer acquisition at Picasa, Google, FastSpring, GoToMeeting and GoToMyPC. In 2020, Engel founded Santa Barbara Venture Partners, a venture capital investment fund. He graduated from Tulane University in 1998 with a major in finance and is a past member of Young Presidents' Organization. Engel sits on multiple boards of directors and advisers to tech companies. Since 2018, he has served as board member on a range of local nonprofits that address the critical issue of homelessness. Engel lives in Santa Barbara, California with his two children and his wife, Emily, an environmental activist, art historian, and lecturer at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Jacques Habra is a Lebanese American technology entrepreneur, investor and thought leader. He is most known for founding WebElite, a web application technology agency in 1996, and creating brands and several companies that experienced successful exits, Habra is the founder and CEO of Noospheric, a startup consulting incubator based in Santa Barbara and he currently focuses on real estate development projects.
Procore Technologies is an American construction management software as a service company founded in 2002, with headquarters in Carpinteria, California.
Chris Gladwin is an American inventor, computer engineer and technology entrepreneur, who has founded or co-founded a series of tech-related companies including MusicNow, Cleversafe and Ocient.
Cleversafe Inc. was an object storage software and systems developer company. It was founded in 2004 by Chris Gladwin, an American technology entrepreneur. The company was acquired by IBM in 2015, and became an integral part of IBM Cloud Object Storage.
