Sky Dayton
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sky Dylan Dayton (born 8 August 1971) is an American entrepreneur.
Dayton is the founder of EarthLink, co-founder of eCompanies, founder and Chairman of Boingo and the Chairman of Helio.
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[edit] Early life
Dayton's father was a sculptor and his mother a dancer and poet. Shortly after his birth in New York City, the family moved to Los Angeles. He lived for a time with his maternal grandparents. His grandfather, David DeWitt, was an IBM Research Fellow, and he played a huge part in introducing young Sky to technology and computers.
At the age of 9, Dayton got his first computer, a Sinclair ZX81. He learned to program in BASIC on this early machine. At age 16, Dayton graduated from the Delphian School, a private boarding school in Oregon, which uses study methods developed by L. Ron Hubbard. He got a job at an entertainment advertising firm, where he became exposed to Apple Macintosh hardware and digital imaging software and soon managed the digital imaging department. He then moved on to a larger advertising agency, Mednick & Associates, where he held a similar role until he was 18.
[edit] Entrepreneurial career
In late 1990 Dayton and a friend raised $20,000 from family and friends and opened Mocha Gallery, an art gallery and coffee house in L.A. After 6 months they changed the name to Cafe Mocha and got rid of the art business. The trendy Cafe Mocha was written up in the LA Times, Vogue and [GQ] magazines and was featured on MTV's "House of Style". He and his partner soon took over another coffeehouse called Joe Cafe in Studio City, California.
In 1992, while still managing Cafe Mocha, Dayton and friend Adam Walker opened Dayton/Walker Design, a Studio City advertising and design firm, in 1992. Dayton/Walker served entertainment clients including Fox Television, Disney, Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures, and Warner Brothers.
In 1993, Dayton heard about the Internet. After spending 80 hours trying to get his Macintosh computer to log in, he finally got connected. Realizing that the Internet was likely to become the next mass medium, in 1994 he decided to start EarthLink. In search of startup capital, he approached Kevin O'Donnell, father of a childhood friend. O'Donnell and other "angel investors" put up the initial startup capital and other investors soon followed, including Robert Kavner and Chip Lacy and then larger investors such as George Soros.
Dayton began in 600 square feet of space in an office in Los Angeles. Dayton quickly expanded the company and by the summer of 1995 EarthLink was able to provide national service enabled by its agreement with UUNET. In 1996 Dayton moved from founding CEO to executive chairman, handing over day-to-day operations of the company to Charles "Garry" Betty. At the time, the company was growing at a rate of 15 percent to 20 percent a week.
In recent years, EarthLink has grown to become one of the nation's leading Internet service providers, with million customers and over $1 billion in annual revenue.
In June 1999, Dayton became non-executive chairman of EarthLink and announced the formation of eCompanies with former Disney Internet chief Jake Winebaum. eCompanies began as an incubator and venture capital fund for developing Internet companies. It is a privately held company, and while it reportedly struggled for a time (as did most Internet companies in 2000), it ultimately launched several successful companies, including LowerMyBills.com, which was purchased by Experian in 2005 for $380M, JAMDAT Mobile, which went public and was then purchased by Electronic Arts in 2005 for $680 million, and Business.com (the domain for which Dayton and Winebaum bought for $7.5M during the height of the dot com bubble), which was purchased by RH Donnelly in 2007 for $345 million.
In August 2000, Dayton returned as Chairman of EarthLink.
Dayton started Boingo Wireless in 2001 to solve the fragmentation problem inherent in Wi-Fi networks. Boingo aggregates hundreds of thousands of Wi-Fi “hot spots” around the world into a single system for major carriers.
Dayton became CEO of Helio upon the company’s launch in 2005. At that time, he resigned as chairman of EarthLink but remained a director. In January 2008 he left the CEO position to become Chairman of Helio's Board of Directors.
Dayton is a director of EarthLink, and chairman of the board of Helio and Boingo. He serves on the advisory board of the Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
[edit] Family and leisure
In 1998 Dayton began taking surfing lessons and quickly fell for the sport. His love for surfing is often featured in articles about him and his businesses.
Dayton is married to Arwen Elys Dayton, a science-fiction writer. They are Scientologists and they have three children.
[edit] References
- Rose, Frank (March 2006), "Sky Dayton Gets Mobile". Wired Magazine, pp. 154-162.
- Young, Shawn (26 October 2005), "EarthLink, SK Telecom Dial In to Data Venture". The Wall Street Journal, p. B4.
- "EarthLink Inc.: Wireless Joint Venture Is Signed With South Korea's SK Telecom". (27 January 2005). The Wall Street Journal, p. D6.
- Ankeny, Jason (March 2005), "Sky Dayton's Newest Next Big Thing (Again)". Wireless Review, pp. 45-50.
- "Surfing Book of Records: Most Enterprising Surfer". (October 2004). Surfing Magazine, p. 66.
- Dayton, Sky (May 2003). "Education in the Internet Age". Imprimis, pp. 1-5.
- Dayton, Sky (25 March 2002). "When Capital Corrupts". Forbes ASAP.
- Helio: About Helio: Meet our leaders: Sky Dayton's Bio. Retrieved 9 May 2006
- McGarvey, Robert J. (January 1998), "Sky's The Limit". Entrepreneur.com.
