Wendell Brown

Wendell Brown

Brown speaking at TIME in New York City, October 2012
Born Wendell Brown
Alma mater Cornell University
Occupation Inventor
Entrepreneur
Computer Scientist
Known for eVoice
Teleo
LiveOps
Home town Oneonta, New York

Wendell Brown is an American computer scientist, entrepreneur, and inventor best known for his innovations in Internet, entertainment, telecommunications, virtual workforce, and energy efficiency technologies. Brown has founded several well-known companies, including Teleo, LiveOps, Nularis, and eVoice.

Inventor

A prolific inventor, Brown has more than 120 U.S. and international patent applications issued or pending in the fields of cyber security, telecommunications, virtual workforce services, electric car technology, mobile phone peripherals, LED lighting, insurance, 3D cameras, biodiesel processing, food packaging, and online music distribution.[1]

Brown invented and patented a method of using mobile phones to count food consumption to improve health. Launched in 2008, the iPhone app "WebDiet" was the first app to count calories and automate meal coaching.[2]

Brown's patented telecommunications technologies have been used to connect more than 1 billion minutes of phone calls, and are used in millions of voicemail accounts.

In January 2012, Brown's energy efficiency innovations were honored by the World Economic Forum in Davos as a Technology Pioneer Award Nominee, and in May 2012 his inventions in the mobile phone sector won the CTIA Smartphone Emerging Technology Award. [3]

Entrepreneur

Brown is a founding father of the “work-at-home call center agent” industry.[4] Brown co-founded LiveOps, and served as its chairman and chief technology officer from 2001. As of 2013, the company had the world's largest work-at-home call agent workforce with more than 20,000 agents employed, and its cloud platform had processed more than one billion minutes of customer service interactions.[5] LiveOps has designed call center solutions for Coca-Cola, Pizza Hut, 1-800-Flowers, Snap-on Tools, OfficeMax, eBay, Amway, and ADT, among others.[6] Brown's virtual call center patent has also been widely licensed to other major call center companies.

In 2014 Brown became chairman of Cloudwear, which develops mobile applications focusing on wearable technology, cyber security, and artificial intelligence.[7] Cloudwear launched the app "iwunta" in 2014 with several major partnerships including Samsung and Telefónica. [8] [9]

Brown co-founded Nularis Energy Solutions in 2010, a developer and supplier of high-efficiency LED lighting systems for residential, retail, hospitality and government sectors. Nularis LED clients include Hyatt Hotels, Four Seasons Hotels, and The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, among others. Brown serves as chairman.[10]

As a Silicon Valley angel investor Brown has helped obtain funding for several successful startup companies, including ADISN, Appeo,[11] MOEO,[12] and IronPort.[13] IronPort was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2007 for US$830 million.[14]

Brown co-founded Teleo in 2004, where he created a VoIP[15] system enabling desktop and laptop PC users to send and receive phone calls over the Internet. Teleo was acquired by Microsoft in 2005[16] and became part of Microsoft's MSN group.

In 2002, Brown was recognized as one of the Top 100 leading computer industry executives by MicroTimes Magazine.[17]

Brown was co-founder and chairman of eVoice from 1999, where he created the eVoice voicemail platform,[18][19] the world's first large-scale, Internet-enabled voicemail system. He patented techniques such as voicemail-to-email, visual voicemail, and enhanced caller ID,[20] innovations later deployed by Google Voice and Apple. eVoice supplied voicemail solutions to AT&T, MCI, AOL, as well as to regional phone companies. eVoice was acquired by AOL Time-Warner in 2001, and became part of the AOL voice services group.[21]

Software Developer

Steve Jobs with Wendell Brown at the launch of Brown's Hippo-C software for Macintosh, January 1984
Steve Jobs with Wendell Brown at the launch of Brown’s Hippo-C software for Macintosh in 1984

Brown is a pioneer of cyber security software technology. He founded WalkSoftly in 1996, which created the first mass market software programs for PC security. In 1997, Brown developed WalkSoftly's innovative Internet security package Guard Dog, which was awarded by the Software Publishers' Association as one of the Top 4 most innovative security products of the 1990s, and named by PC Data as one of the Top 10 bestselling retail security software products of all time. WalkSoftly was acquired by CyberMedia Inc. in 1997.[22]

Brown's name is known among classic video game fans for his work in the 1980s writing and designing several best-selling games for Imagic, including Star Wars for ColecoVision, and Beauty & the Beast,[23] Nova Blast,[24] and Moonsweeper[25][26] for Mattel's Intellivision.

In the mid-1980s, Brown developed the ADAP SoundRack system, a pioneering direct-to-hard-disk audio recording system that replaced the traditional method of tape-splice sound editing. ADAP was used to create and edit soundtracks of Hollywood movies and TV shows, including "Born on the Fourth of July," "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids," "Die Hard," "The Cosby Show," "Falcon Crest," and the TV pilot of "Beverly Hills 90210." ADAP was also used by recording artists Peter Gabriel, Fleetwood Mac, The Pointer Sisters, Motley Crue, David Bowie, and Natalie Cole, and others.[27]

With his ADAP expertise, Brown was called upon by The Walt Disney Company and Toshiba as a consultant for sound projects. Brown later worked as a telecommunications cryptography expert with National Semiconductor to help build hardware implementations of DS3 algorithms.[28]

Brown also founded Hippopotamus Software in the 1980s, an early software developer for the Apple Macintosh. The "Hippo-C" C compiler went on to become a leading software development environment for the Mac and Atari ST computer systems.[29]

Early Life and Education

Brown grew up in the city of Oneonta, New York and graduated from Oneonta High School. [30] While in high school, Brown began programming and selling personal computer systems, and published his first computer article in Byte (magazine). In 2013, he was honored with a permanent plaque on Oneonta High School's Wall of Distinction for his accomplishments in business and technology.[31]

Brown graduated from Cornell University in 1982,[32] earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.[33] While at Cornell, Brown was awarded a Hughes Aircraft Bachelors of Science Undergraduate Fellowship.[34]

Private Life

Brown is a frequent speaker, tech judge, and participant in communities including the Israel Conference,[35] the World Economic Forum,[36] TED (conference), [37] Google and MIT Hackathons,[38] Digital Life Design Munich and DLD Tel Aviv Conferences,[39] the Web Summit Dublin,[40] CTIA - The Wireless Association,[41] AlwaysOn ("Networking the Global Silicon Valley"),[42] El Financiero (Bloomberg),[43] and the Mita Institute Tech Talks.[44]

Brown is an advisory committee member of the Progressive X Prize for automobile innovation including new fuel technologies and electric car development,[45] an advisor to the MITA Institute Venture Fund,[46] as well as an advisor to Gener8, a stereoscopic 3D movie company with film credits including "The Amazing Spider-Man" and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2".[47]

Brown is also a licensed private pilot and is active in the development of new airplane, rocket, and electric vehicle designs.

Philanthropy

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.

References

  1. ↑ http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=pWkSAAAAEBAJ&dq=wendell+brown
  2. ↑ http://venturebeat.com/2008/09/08/demofall-08-webdiet-uses-mobile-phone-to-help-count-calories/
  3. ↑ http://www.crunchbase.com/person/wendell-brown
  4. ↑ http://www.liveops.com/company/history.html
  5. ↑ http://finance.yahoo.com/news/liveops-present-exhibit-international-cloud-160000198.html
  6. ↑ http://www.liveops.com/liveops-customers-case-studies
  7. ↑ http://cloudwear.com/about
  8. ↑ http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/16/wayra-uk-six-more/
  9. ↑ http://investing.businessweek.com/research/markets/news/article.asp?docKey=600-201402230640PR_NEWS_USPRX____LA70051-1
  10. ↑ http://www.nularis.com/about/management.html
  11. ↑ http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10034606-52.html
  12. ↑ http://vator.tv/company/moeo?competition=122
  13. ↑ http://www.epochnews.com/artman/publish/printer_3454.shtml
  14. ↑ Keith Regan (January 4, 2007). "Cisco buys IronPort for $830 Million". E-Commerce Times. Retrieved November 5, 2013.
  15. ↑ http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/38058/start-up_gets_backing_e-mail_pioneers
  16. ↑ http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2005/aug05/09-30msnteleopr.aspx
  17. ↑ http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=22110183&privcapId=23378968
  18. ↑ http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/print.php/929531
  19. ↑ http://www.allbusiness.com/technology/software-services-applications-internet-social/6062033-1.html
  20. ↑ http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=pWkSAAAAEBAJ&dq=wendell+brown
  21. ↑ http://www.virtualpbxcompare.com/service-provider/evoice.html
  22. ↑ http://www.zoominfo.com/#!search/profile/person?personId=53192658&targetid=profile
  23. ↑ http://www.intellivisionlives.com/bluesky/games/credits/imagic.shtml
  24. ↑ http://www.intellivisionlives.com/bluesky/games/credits/imagic.shtml
  25. ↑ http://www.colecovision.dk/moonsweeper.htm
  26. ↑ http://www.intellivisionworld.com/English/FAQ/
  27. ↑ "Hippo-C creator Wendell Brown's new ADAP SoundRack". Macworld (Mac Publishing). August 1988. p. 17.
  28. ↑ "Hippo-C creator Wendell Brown's new ADAP SoundRack". Macworld (Mac Publishing). August 1988. p. 18.
  29. ↑ http://www.zoominfo.com/#!search/profile/person?personId=53192658&targetid=profile
  30. ↑ http://www.oneontahighalumni.org/index.php?id=2
  31. ↑ http://www.oneontahighalumni.org/index.php?id=2
  32. ↑ "Cornell Club Steaks and Startups". Cornell Club of Los Angeles. September 22, 2013. Retrieved 5 November 2013.
  33. ↑ "Oneonta's Own Wendell Brown". The Oneonta Star (The Oneonta Star). March 2001. p. 7.
  34. ↑ "Oneonta's Own Wendell Brown". The Oneonta Star (The Oneonta Star). March 2001. p. 8.
  35. ↑ http://www.flickr.com/photos/theisraelconference/9033473763/
  36. ↑ http://www.weforum.org
  37. ↑ http://www.ted.com
  38. ↑ http://hackgeny.com/#judges
  39. ↑ http://dld-conference.com
  40. ↑ http://www.summitdublin.com/attendees/attendees-2014
  41. ↑ http://www.ctia.org
  42. ↑ http://www.alwayson.goingon.com/AboutAO
  43. ↑ http://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/no-te-lo-pierdas/139-no-te-pierdas/39900-tv-via-web-mejor-inversion-que-licitar-cadena-wendell-brown.html
  44. ↑ http://mitainstitute.com/2013-speakers/wendell-brown/
  45. ↑ http://www.progressiveautoxprize.org/about/advisors
  46. ↑ http://www.crunchbase.com/person/wendell-brown
  47. ↑ http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=22110183&privcapId=23378968

External links