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===Borland (1982-1995)===
===Borland (1982-1995)===
Realizing that even innovation such as the [[MICRAL]] would not be commercially viable in [[Europe]], Kahn arrived in the [[United States|U.S.]] as a tourist in 1982 and won a job with [[Hewlett-Packard]], subsequently losing it because of his illegal status.
Realizing that even innovation such as the [[MICRAL]] would not be commercially viable in [[Europe]], Kahn arrived in the [[United States|U.S.]] as a tourist in 1982 and won a job with [[Hewlett-Packard]], subsequently losing it because of his illegal status. He also had with him an agreement to market a software package, MenuMaster, developed by a team of European programmers. MenuMaster was tied to the [[CP/M]] operating system for personal computers.


After a period of consulting activities, he set up [[Borland|Borland International]], although he was still not a legal U.S. resident at the time.<ref name="Unz">Unz</ref> After four years in the U.S. on a tourist visa, Kahn was granted a [[Permanent residence (United States)|Green Card]] in 1986. He is today a [[Naturalization|naturalized]] U.S. citizen.<ref name="Wortman">Wortman</ref>
After a period of consulting activities, he set up [[Borland|Borland International]] in May of 1983, although he was still not a legal U.S. resident at the time.<ref name="Unz">Unz</ref> After four years in the U.S. on a tourist visa, Kahn was granted a [[Permanent residence (United States)|Green Card]] in 1986. He is today a [[Naturalization|naturalized]] U.S. citizen.<ref name="Wortman">Wortman</ref>


He came to Silicon Valley without many possessions. The Borland company was started above a [[Automobile repair shop|garage]], in a rented, two room space over an actual [[Jaguar Cars|Jaguar]] repair shop in [[Scotts Valley, California]]. Kahn liked to joke he was starting his business the "American way, in a garage". Kahn was financially strapped, with little income, and was unable to purchase cars for his family due to his immigrant and credit status. Former Zilog Inc. advertising manager, Charmaine R. Taylor co-signed for two vehicles, and placed advertising her agency created for Borland products. This allowed him to stretch his non-existent budget long enough to garner sales to pay for the [[United States dollar|USD]]$45,000 in advertising. The first [[Turbo Pascal]] product ads exploded Borland's name in [[Silicon Valley]], and launched the company financially.<ref name="Erickson">Erickson</ref>
After a period of renting a single desk and a telephone in a larger company in San Jose, CA, Kahn set the Borland company up above a [[Automobile repair shop|garage]], in a rented, two room space over an actual [[Jaguar Cars|Jaguar]] repair shop in [[Scotts Valley, California]]. Kahn liked to joke he was starting his business the "American way, in a garage". Kahn was financially strapped, with little income, and was unable to purchase cars for his family due to his immigrant and credit status. The company's first financing was $20,000 contributed by Kahn's father. Former Zilog Inc. advertising manager, Charmaine R. Taylor co-signed for two vehicles, and placed advertising her agency created for Borland products. This allowed him to stretch his non-existent budget long enough to garner sales to pay for the [[United States dollar|USD]]$45,000 in advertising. The first [[Turbo Pascal]] product ads exploded Borland's name in [[Silicon Valley]], and launched the company financially.<ref name="Erickson">Erickson</ref>


Borland's first commercial success was Turbo Pascal. Ironically, Turbo Pascal was written by the European team not as a product to be marketed but rather as a necessary step towards adapting MenuMaster to run on the fast-growing [[MS-DOS]] operating system instead of just CP/M. When it was finished, however, Kahn immediately recognized its huge market potential and called a board meeting to change the focus of the company from MenuMaster to Turbo Pascal. Success was due in part to taking big risks with advertising expenses, in part to innovative pricing, and mainly to an excellent product.
⚫
Borland's first commercial success was Turbo Pascal, immediately followed by the first desktop organizer, [[SideKick]]. Borland went on to have a line of PC development tools, as well as a suite of office products that were in direct competition with [[Microsoft]] and [[Lotus Software|Lotus/IBM]]. Borland filed its [[IPO]] in London in 1986, successfully, followed by secondary offerings in the US in 1989 and 1991. Kahn had become a successful high-tech business executive.

At the board meeting in October of 1983, Kahn convincingly argued for a low price strategy in a high-price market, which ended up as a successful strategy. Board member Tim Berry described that meeting years later in a blog post: ([http://timberry.bplans.com/2007/06/true_story_entr.html True Story: Entrepreneur Meets MBA])

"Turbo Pascal, which was line for line, pound for pound, one of the best software products ever made, fell into our lap in October of 1983. [Side note: that's a good story, you can read it in Fire and the Valley, and I intend to tell it in this blog, but not now]. That was just a few months after the JRT scandal, in which somebody brought out a $30 Pascal package to compete against the $450 mainstream offering, only to go broke after charging a lot of credit cards that weren’t refunded. Furthermore, my MBA analysis pointed out, with the leader at $450 per unit there was no reason to go cheap. Too cheap would hurt credibility, I said. And we were brand new, we didn’t have working capital to handle volume. Philippe, however, politely ignored my logic and set Turbo Pascal at $49.95 per unit. And he was so right, I was so wrong, if I hadn’t had equity to console me it would have hurt a lot. The pricing move was brilliant, that plus some very gutsy marketing got Turbo Pascal’s wings up and soaring very fast, and Borland International never looked back."

⚫
The success of Turbo Pascal was almost immediately followed by the first desktop organizer, [[SideKick]]. Borland went on to have a line of PC development tools, as well as a suite of office products that were in direct competition with [[Microsoft]] and [[Lotus Software|Lotus/IBM]]. Borland filed its [[IPO]] in London in 1986, successfully, followed by secondary offerings in the US in 1989 and 1991. Kahn had become a successful high-tech business executive.


Borland competed with Microsoft in the 80s and early 90s. President, CEO, and Chairman of Borland since inception and taking Borland without venture capital from no revenues to a $500 million run-rate, Kahn and the Borland board came to a disagreement on how to focus the company. Kahn was forced to resign by the Borland board from his position as CEO in January 1995.<ref name="KahnFired">Kellner, Krey, Jeffers, Parks</ref> However, he remained on the board as a director until November 1996, showing support and loyalty in the controversy until he finally resigned from that position.<ref name="KahnBoard">Borland press release</ref> Kahn had been the President, CEO and Chairman of Borland for 12 years.
Borland competed with Microsoft in the 80s and early 90s. President, CEO, and Chairman of Borland since inception and taking Borland without venture capital from no revenues to a $500 million run-rate, Kahn and the Borland board came to a disagreement on how to focus the company. Kahn was forced to resign by the Borland board from his position as CEO in January 1995.<ref name="KahnFired">Kellner, Krey, Jeffers, Parks</ref> However, he remained on the board as a director until November 1996, showing support and loyalty in the controversy until he finally resigned from that position.<ref name="KahnBoard">Borland press release</ref> Kahn had been the President, CEO and Chairman of Borland for 12 years.

Revision as of 22:02, 18 May 2011

Philippe Kahn
Born (1962-03-16) March 16, 1962 (age 62)
Paris, France
Occupation(s)Technology innovator, Entrepreneur

Philippe Kahn (born March 16, 1962) is a technology innovator and entrepreneur, who is credited with creating the first camera phone solution sharing pictures instantly on public networks. Kahn's first publicly shared picture is unique in that no other teams making the claim have any pictures.[1] Kahn has founded four successful technology companies: Starfish Software, LightSurf Technologies, Borland Software and his current company, Fullpower Technologies,[2] of which he is CEO. Fullpower provides solutions converging life sciences, wireless technology, accelerometrics, nanotechnology and MotionX solutions.

Education and early days

Kahn was educated in mathematics at ETH Zurich, Switzerland (Swiss Federal Polytechnic Institute), and University of Nice, France. Kahn received a masters in mathematics. He also majored in musicology and classical flute at the Zurich Music Conservatory in Switzerland.[3] As a student, Kahn developed the software for the MICRAL, the earliest non-kit personal computer based on a microprocessor. The MICRAL was marketed for vertical applications, and is now credited by the Computer History Museum as the first ever microprocessor-based personal computer.[4]

Kahn is married to Sonia Lee, who co-founded Fullpower Technologies and LightSurf. They raise four children. Together, they run an environmental charity, the Lee-Kahn Foundation. Kahn is known for his passion for classical music and contemporary Jazz and he plays the flute semi-professionally. Furthermore he is competitive in small sailboat racing and leads his sailing team Pegasus Racing which focuses on sailing small high performance sailboats and short-handed sailing.

Technology

Philippe Kahn Working on the first camera-phones
File:Firstcameraphoneimage.gif
June 11th, 1997, Santa Cruz, CA: Image taken by Philippe Kahn after his daughter's birth.
July 1st, 2010, Double Jeopardy Question

Kahn has founded four software companies: Borland, Starfish Software (acquired by Motorola in 1998), LightSurf Technologies (acquired by VeriSign in 2005) and recently Fullpower Technologies, founded in 2003.

Fullpower Technologies (2003-Present)

Fullpower, founded in 2003 and focused on the convergence of life sciences, wireless technology, accelerometrics, nanotechnology and Microelectromechanical systems, is well known for its MotionX Technology Platform.

First introduced publicly with the launch of Apple's App Store in July 2008,[5] the MotionX Technology Platform provides the underlying technology for the leading Navigation and Fitness Applications on the App Store. These include:

  • MotionX-GPS for the iPhone, the universal outdoors sports and navigation GPS solution launched in October 2008.
  • MotionX-GPS Drive for the iPhone, the leading door-to-door pedestrian and driving navigation application launched in September 2009.
  • MotionX-GPS HD and MotionX-GPS Drive HD, MotionX's Navigation solutions optimized for the iPad, launched in May 2010.
  • Nike+ GPS, launched in September 2010, the leading fitness application on the iPhone and iPod Touch. MotionX provides the underlying technology for the Nike+ GPS Application. "We took great care in evaluating sensing technologies and found the MotionX Technology Platform to be superior," said Stefan Olander, Vice President of Digital Sport at Nike.[6]

As of May 2010, Fullpower announced over 5 million MotionX users worldwide.[7] Fullpower's MotionX Technology Platform has applications in renewable energy, mobile devices, wearable devices, imaging, sports, gaming, life-sciences, logistics and security solutions.

LightSurf Technologies (1997-2005)

Kahn is credited with creating the camera phone in 1997.[8] Others claim the camera phone was a prior invention. However Kahn's picture of the birth of his daughter is the only camera-phone record. There were several digital cameras with cellular phone transmission capability shown by companies such as Kodak, Olympus in the early 1990s but none worked on public cellular networks.[9] There was also a digital camera with cellular phone designed by Shosaku Kawashima of Canon in Japan in May 1997.[10]

The camera phone became the founding vision of LightSurf.

The impetus for this invention was the birth of Kahn's child, Sophie. He was so excited and wanted to show off pictures so he jury-rigged a cell phone with a digital camera and sent off photos in real time. In a recent NPR interview, Kahn discusses the social impact of the camera phone.[11] In another article with Slate.com,[12] Kahn discusses the invention of the camera phone and its uses today.[11] LightSurf built the first end-to-end solution for picture messaging. LightSurf technology powers the offerings of Sprint, Verizon and many other leading carriers in the world. LightSurf is now owned by VeriSign, who acquired the company in 2005 for $315 million as it was filing its IPO. The camera phone is arguably one of the most successful consumer electronic devices of all time with more than 2 billion camera-phones in use by 2010. Work on the camera phone infrastructure started in 1997. In Japan J-phone used the blueprint architecture set forward by Kahn and his team. The first handset was made by Sharp Electronics and the whole system complete with picture-sharing was made public in 1999 with excellent commercial success by 2001. In the North American market, Sprint and Verizon partnered with LightSurf. However, Sprint was the first to deploy a commercial system in 2002. The Sprint system, designed, developed, managed by LightSurf, was a combination of ASP/MSP solutions. The first US camera phone was the Sanyo 8100 running on the Sprint infrastructure with the LightSurf Picture-Mail system.

Starfish Software (1994-1998)

Starfish Software was founded in 1994 by Philippe Kahn and Sonia Lee. The founding vision of Starfish was "global synchronization and integration of wireless and wireline devices", which translated with the TrueSync platform to: "Enter or edit information anywhere, synchronization is automatic everywhere". Starfish developed much of the core IP for device synchronization, especially in the wireless industry. TrueSync was the first Over-The-Air (OTA) synchronization system. Starfish was successfully acquired by Motorola for $325 million in 1998 and subsequently became a division of Nokia after Motorola's downturn. Today Starfish's technology is an integral part of the Nokia platform[citation needed].

Borland (1982-1995)

Realizing that even innovation such as the MICRAL would not be commercially viable in Europe, Kahn arrived in the U.S. as a tourist in 1982 and won a job with Hewlett-Packard, subsequently losing it because of his illegal status. He also had with him an agreement to market a software package, MenuMaster, developed by a team of European programmers. MenuMaster was tied to the CP/M operating system for personal computers.

After a period of consulting activities, he set up Borland International in May of 1983, although he was still not a legal U.S. resident at the time.[13] After four years in the U.S. on a tourist visa, Kahn was granted a Green Card in 1986. He is today a naturalized U.S. citizen.[14]

After a period of renting a single desk and a telephone in a larger company in San Jose, CA, Kahn set the Borland company up above a garage, in a rented, two room space over an actual Jaguar repair shop in Scotts Valley, California. Kahn liked to joke he was starting his business the "American way, in a garage". Kahn was financially strapped, with little income, and was unable to purchase cars for his family due to his immigrant and credit status. The company's first financing was $20,000 contributed by Kahn's father. Former Zilog Inc. advertising manager, Charmaine R. Taylor co-signed for two vehicles, and placed advertising her agency created for Borland products. This allowed him to stretch his non-existent budget long enough to garner sales to pay for the USD$45,000 in advertising. The first Turbo Pascal product ads exploded Borland's name in Silicon Valley, and launched the company financially.[15]

Borland's first commercial success was Turbo Pascal. Ironically, Turbo Pascal was written by the European team not as a product to be marketed but rather as a necessary step towards adapting MenuMaster to run on the fast-growing MS-DOS operating system instead of just CP/M. When it was finished, however, Kahn immediately recognized its huge market potential and called a board meeting to change the focus of the company from MenuMaster to Turbo Pascal. Success was due in part to taking big risks with advertising expenses, in part to innovative pricing, and mainly to an excellent product.

At the board meeting in October of 1983, Kahn convincingly argued for a low price strategy in a high-price market, which ended up as a successful strategy. Board member Tim Berry described that meeting years later in a blog post: (True Story: Entrepreneur Meets MBA)

"Turbo Pascal, which was line for line, pound for pound, one of the best software products ever made, fell into our lap in October of 1983. [Side note: that's a good story, you can read it in Fire and the Valley, and I intend to tell it in this blog, but not now]. That was just a few months after the JRT scandal, in which somebody brought out a $30 Pascal package to compete against the $450 mainstream offering, only to go broke after charging a lot of credit cards that weren’t refunded. Furthermore, my MBA analysis pointed out, with the leader at $450 per unit there was no reason to go cheap. Too cheap would hurt credibility, I said. And we were brand new, we didn’t have working capital to handle volume. Philippe, however, politely ignored my logic and set Turbo Pascal at $49.95 per unit. And he was so right, I was so wrong, if I hadn’t had equity to console me it would have hurt a lot. The pricing move was brilliant, that plus some very gutsy marketing got Turbo Pascal’s wings up and soaring very fast, and Borland International never looked back."

The success of Turbo Pascal was almost immediately followed by the first desktop organizer, SideKick. Borland went on to have a line of PC development tools, as well as a suite of office products that were in direct competition with Microsoft and Lotus/IBM. Borland filed its IPO in London in 1986, successfully, followed by secondary offerings in the US in 1989 and 1991. Kahn had become a successful high-tech business executive.

Borland competed with Microsoft in the 80s and early 90s. President, CEO, and Chairman of Borland since inception and taking Borland without venture capital from no revenues to a $500 million run-rate, Kahn and the Borland board came to a disagreement on how to focus the company. Kahn was forced to resign by the Borland board from his position as CEO in January 1995.[16] However, he remained on the board as a director until November 1996, showing support and loyalty in the controversy until he finally resigned from that position.[17] Kahn had been the President, CEO and Chairman of Borland for 12 years.

Borland was bought by Micro Focus on May 6, 2009. The San Jose Mercury News reported that, "Philippe Kahn, who founded the company in 1983 and headed it until 1994, called the deal a 'great fit and synergism for both companies and excellent outcome for employees, customers and shareholders.'"[18]

Philanthropy

Sonia Lee and Philippe Kahn established the Lee-Kahn Foundation in 1998. The foundation sponsors local and national non-profit organizations dedicated to advancing human growth through increased access to health care, education and the arts as well as animal welfare.[19]

Music

Kahn is formally trained in classical music, composition and flute. In interviews he makes it clear that he practises every day and that music is a key part of his personal life. In particular on his Facebook page he cites Debussy as his "religion". Kahn has recorded jazz albums with professionals that are among his friends. He has recorded three albums that mix modern classical influences such as Dutilleux, Jolivet and Debussy with straight ahead jazz. His albums are available on most online music stores. In 1990 he released "Pacific High" featuring: John Abercrombie, Alex Acuna, Richie Beirach, Billy Hart, Ray Kane and Dave Liebman. In 1991 he released a CD called "Walking on the Moon," featuring his own performance and promoting space exploration. Later in 1992 he released "Paradiso" featuring: John Abercrombie, Alex Acuna, Alan Broadbent, Terence Blanchard, Peter Erskine, Dave Eshelman and John Patitucci.

Sailing and sports

Kahn's focus on the environment and the outdoors lead him to the sport of sailing. Kahn's sailing team, Pegasus Racing,[20] competes in many world championships each year around the world.[21] An offshore sailors with over 10 trans-Pacific crossings, Kahn holds the double handed record from San Francisco to Oahu, Hawaii. Recent sailing achievements also include winning the double handed division of the 2007 Transpacific Yacht Race race from Los Angeles to Hawaii, and setting the Transpac record at 7 days, 19 hours, beating the previous time of 10 days, 4 hours.[22] In this Gizmodo interview,[23] Kahn discusses the race.

Philippe's Law

In the early 1990s while at Borland, Kahn postulated a formula of software development productivity that, in a 1992 COMDEX keynote speech, he named Philippe's Law. The law states that the productivity of a software developer in a team of N people is diminished by dividing it by the cube root of N.[24]

Philippe's 3 Rules of Software Craftsmanship

In late 2007 in his keynote address at the MEMS Executive Congress,[25] Kahn formulated what he called "Philippe's 3 Rules of Software Craftsmanship:[26][27]

Rule #1 - "Start with a vision"

Rule #2 - "Throwing more bodies at software projects only makes things worse"

Rule #3 - "There are three vectors that drive software craftsmanship: quality, schedule, and features. The challenge is that you only get to pick two"

References

Notes
  1. ^ Parks, Maney, Agger, Krey
  2. ^ Fullpower Technologies, Inc.
  3. ^ Kahn
  4. ^ Computer History Museum
  5. ^ Marketwire Press Release
  6. ^ Fullpower-MotionX Teams with Nike for Nike+ GPS
  7. ^ Fullpower Introduces MotionX-GPS HD for the iPad
  8. ^ Carrol, Paul B. and Chunka Mui. 2008. Billion-Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years. Portfolio. ISBN 1591842190.
  9. ^ History of digital camera
  10. ^ United States Patent: D405457
  11. ^ a b Kahn, NPR interview Cite error: The named reference "KahnNPR" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  12. ^ When camera phones attack.- By Michael Agger(Posted Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2007, at 6:21 PM ET)Slate Magazine
  13. ^ Unz
  14. ^ Wortman
  15. ^ Erickson
  16. ^ Kellner, Krey, Jeffers, Parks
  17. ^ Borland press release
  18. ^ San Jose Mercury News
  19. ^ www.lee-kahn.com
  20. ^ Philippe Kahn and Pegasus Racing, Racing Sailboats Worldwide
  21. ^ www.pegasus.com
  22. ^ Transpac 2007 had everything but wind, Trans Pacific Yacht Club press release
  23. ^ Philippe Kahn: Emailing the Father of the Camera Phone as He Sails Across the Great Blue Pacific - By Brian Lam, 7:22 PM on Thu Jul 19 2007
  24. ^ Zucker
  25. ^ MEMS Executive Congress
  26. ^ Fullpower.com
  27. ^ Johnson
Bibliography


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