Dominique Trempont
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Dominique Trempont is an American executive and board member in large multinational high tech companies and start-ups. His experience spans a globally-run material science corporation to enterprise and consumer-focused software and services.
He spent the first 14 years of his career as a key executive at Raychem with worldwide responsibilities and a focus on large-scale turnarounds in the United States, China, India, Japan, Latin America and Europe. Raychem was the world leader in material sciences and a billion dollar company operating globally in 80 countries (now a subsidiary of Tyco International).
In 1993, Dominique was recruited by Steve Jobs to turn around NeXT, first as chief financial officer and later expanding to lead all operations, while Jobs focused on running Pixar. Dominique led NeXT’s shift from hardware to software and brought the company to profitability. He successfully restructured the company financially, organizationally and strategically, and sold NeXT to Apple in 1997 for $462M.
In 1997, Dominique joined hands with the founder of Gemplus (now renamed Gemalto), world leader in smart cards, and became chief executive officer of Gemplus Corp. He built a highly profitable $150M new business in two years by focusing on the convergence of cellular telephony, micro-payments and consumer applications. Gemplus is now a 2 billion dollar company and has since gone public.
In 1999, Dominique became CEO of Kanisa, an early-stage enterprise knowledge management software startup and ran it for three years during the downturn. Kanisa developed and markets a suite of "knowledge-empowered" customer service applications to automate the problem resolution process across multiple channels including contact centers, help desks, email, and self-service sites. The company merged with Serviceware (now Knova) in 2004.
Between 1996 and 1997, Dominique sat on the board of Verity, an industry leader in enterprise search. In 1998, Dominique became a founding investor in Signio, a leading online payment platform. Signio was sold to VeriSign for $700M in 1999. Since 2001, he has also been on the advisory board of the INSEAD Business School (France/Singapore), where he now teaches. and was on the Board of Trustees of the International School of the Peninsula in Palo Alto (CA) between 1995 and 1997.
Dominique is currently on the boards of three public companies: Finisar, 3Com and Energy Recovery Inc. At 3Com and ERI, Dominique chairs the Finance and Audit Committee.
Since 2003, Dominique has advised several top venture firms including Kleiner Perkins, Battery Ventures and the founding teams of five consumer focused startups in online media, search, publishing, 3D-graphics and mobile micro-payment platforms, including ZillionTV. He also market tested a 1:1 personalized math and sciences internet tutoring service using Indian tutors.
Dominique is a U.S. citizen, has a Master of Business Administration from INSEAD, and a BA in Business Administration and Computer Science from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.