Wendell Brown (born March 21, 1961) is an American computer scientist and entrepreneur best known for his innovations in telecommunications. Brown has founded several well-known companies, including Teleo, LiveOps, and eVoice.
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At Cornell University, Brown was awarded a Hughes Aircraft Bachelors of Science Undergraduate Fellowship in 1980.
Brown's name is known among classic video game fans for his work in the early 1980s (1982–1985) writing and designing several best-selling games for Imagic including Star Wars for ColecoVision, and Beauty & the Beast,[1] Nova Blast,[2] and Moonsweeper[3][4] titles for Mattel's Intellivision.
Brown invented and designed ADAP, the world’s first direct-to-hard-disk audio-recording system. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, ADAP was used to create and edit the soundtracks of Hollywood movies and TV shows, including the TV pilot of Beverly Hills, 90210, and by recording artists including Peter Gabriel, Fleetwood Mac and The Pointer Sisters. With his ADAP expertise, Brown was called upon by Disney and Toshiba as a consultant for various sound projects. Brown later worked as a telecommunications cryptography expert with National Semiconductor to help build hardware implementations of DS3 algorithms.
As co-founder and chairman of LiveOps Inc., Brown was the key inventor of the “work-at-home call center agent” industry.[5] In 2001, he co-founded CallCast, which later became LiveOps, and served as its chairman and chief technology officer. The company is one of the largest outsourced work-at-home call center in the world with more than 20,000 work-at-home agents employed.
Brown created a VoIP[6] system enabling desktop and laptop PC users to send and receive phone calls over the Internet, called Teleo, a company that he co-founded and chaired. Teleo was acquired by Microsoft in 2005.
Brown also created the eVoice voicemail platform,[7][8] the first large-scale, Internet-enabled voicemail system. He pioneered techniques such as voicemail-to-email, visual voicemail, enhanced caller ID,[9] innovations later deployed by Google Voice and Apple. eVoice supplied voicemail solutions to AT&T, MCI, AOL, as well as to many regional companies. eVoice was acquired by AOL Time-Warner in 2001. The eVoice platform became part of the AOL voice services group.
As a Silicon Valley angel investor Brown has helped obtain funding for several successful startup companies, including ADISN, PhoneTell, WebDiet,[10] and IronPort.[11] IronPort was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2007 for $830 million.
Brown is a licensed private pilot and is active in the development of new airplane, rocket, and electric vehicle designs. In 2010, Brown was appointed to the advisory committee of the Progressive X Prize for automobile innovation including new fuel technologies and electric car development. [12]
A prolific inventor, Wendell Brown has more than 40 U.S. and international patent applications issued or pending in the fields of telecommunications, electric car technology, and online music distribution. Brown is a pioneer of multiple green technologies including the development of Jatropha biodiesel, electric car charging systems, and the next generation of LED lighting.[13]
Brown’s philanthropic endeavors include the endowment of a named scholarship at Soka University of America (Aliso Viejo, California), support for Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University's Aviation Safety Lab & Library, and private sponsorship of underprivileged students in South America.