Randy Komisar is an American technology attorney, executive, and author living in Silicon Valley, California. Komisar is the co-founder of Claris, former CEO of Lucas Arts Entertainment, Chief Financial Officer of GO Corp, and the "virtual CEO" of TiVo.
Komisar attended Brown University for undergraduate studies and received a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He practiced law in the Boston area until he managed the legal aspects of the acquisition of Pixar by Steve Jobs. [1] Following the acquisition, he went to work for Apple, where he worked on the project to license the Macintosh operating systems to Apollo Computer. Following the refusal of the board to license the operating system, Komisar accepted a job to co-found Claris. [2]
Apple decided to spin software products off to a third party, creating Claris in 1987. Komisar was asked by Bill Campbell to become a co-founder of the company and ran a number of acquisitions. While at Claris, Komisar negotiated deals with Filemaker, which the company would morph into over time, but failed to negotiate an attempt to acquire Quark.
Claris would later announce intentions to go public. Apple declined the option for Claris to file for an initial public offering, leading to each executive selling their shares. [3]
Komisar would go on to work with a number of notable technology startups:
Komisar has written a number of books about entrepreneurialism and venture capital:
TiVo Corporation, formerly known as the Rovi Corporation and Macrovision Solutions Corporation, was an American technology company headquartered in San Jose, California. Now operating as Xperi, the company is primarily involved in licensing its intellectual property within the consumer electronics industry, including digital rights management, electronic program guide software, and metadata. The company holds over 6,000 pending and registered patents. The company also provides analytics and recommendation platforms for the video industry.
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.
GO Corporation was a company founded in 1987 to create pen-based portable computers, and a pen-based operating system and software. It was a pioneer of pen-based computing and was one of the most well-funded start-up companies of its time.
L. John Doerr is an American investor and venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins in Menlo Park, California. In February 2009, Doerr was appointed a member of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board to provide the President and his administration with advice and counsel in trying to fix America's economic downturn. Forbes ranked Doerr as the 40th richest person in tech in 2017 and, as of 1 August, 2023, as the 146th richest person in the world, with a net worth of US$11.9 billion. Doerr is the author of Measure What Matters, a book about goal-setting, and Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now.
William Vincent Campbell Jr. was an American businessman and chairman of the board of trustees of Columbia University and chairman of the board of Intuit. He was VP of Marketing and board director for Apple Inc. and CEO for Claris, Intuit, and GO Corporation. Campbell coached, among others, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, and Sundar Pichai at Google, Steve Jobs at Apple, Jeff Bezos at Amazon, Jack Dorsey and Dick Costolo at Twitter, and Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook.
Bertrand Serlet is a French software engineer and businessman; he worked first at the Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique (INRIA) before leaving France for the United States in 1985. He was the Senior Vice President of Software Engineering at Apple Inc.
John Hanke is an American technology executive. Hanke led Google's Geo product division, which includes Google Earth, Google Maps, StreetView, SketchUp, and Panoramio. He is founder and CEO of Niantic, Inc., a software company spun out of Google and the creator of Pokémon Go.
The iFund is a US$200 million capital fund. Developers may enter into equity deals for the creation of applications, services, and components for Apple Inc.'s iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad platform. It is being offered and managed by venture capital company Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers (KPCB).
TiVo Inc. was an American corporation with its primary product being its eponymous digital video recorder. While primarily operating in the United States, TiVO also operated in Australia, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and Western Europe. On September 8, 2016, TiVo Inc. was acquired by Rovi Corporation. The new entity became known as TiVo Corporation, which in turn, merged with Xperi in December 2019.
Michael J. Homer was an American electronics and computer industry executive who played major roles in the development of the personal computer, mobile devices and the Internet.
Mike McCue is an American technology entrepreneur who founded or co-founded Paper Software, Tellme Networks, and Flipboard.
Raymond J. Lane is an American business executive and strategist specializing in technology and finance. Lane is best known for assisting corporations with technology strategy, organizational development, team building, and sales and growth management.
Mike Abbott was the Executive Vice President, Software for General Motors. He was formerly the vice president of Apple's Cloud Services team. He also previously worked as a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, vice president of engineering at Twitter, team lead for Azure at Microsoft and senior vice president of apps and services at Palm.
Looker Data Sciences, Inc. is an American computer software company headquartered in Santa Cruz, California. It was acquired by Google in 2019 and is now part of the Google Cloud Platform. Looker markets a data exploration and discovery business intelligence platform.
Social Capital, formerly known as Social+Capital Partnership, is a venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, California. The firm specializes in technology startups, providing seed funding, venture capital, and private equity.
Transphorm, Inc. is an American semiconductor company focused on producing transistors made from gallium nitride (GaN) for use in switched-mode power supplies. The company was acquired by Renesas Electronics in 2024.
Nitin Khanna is an Indian-born entrepreneur settled in Portland, Oregon, United States. He is the chairman of MergerTech, an international mergers and acquisitions advisory firm. He is also the co-founder of Saber Corp., which is now acquired by EDS.
Eric Feng is an American software engineer, business executive, and financier. He is a former general partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, where he focused on leading early stage consumer investments before leaving in 2018. Previously he was CTO of Kleiner Perkins portfolio company Flipboard, along with other companies.
Chris Barton is an American tech entrepreneur, inventor, investor, and keynote speaker. He founded Shazam, a music identification and discovery company, and was its first CEO.