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Naveen Jain

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Naveen Jain
File:Naveen Jain.jpg
Business Executive, Entrepreneur
Born1959
Alma materIIT Roorkee
XLRI
OccupationCEO of inome
Known forFounder and former CEO of Infospace
Websitehttp://www.naveenjain.com/

Naveen K. Jain (born 1959) is a business executive and entrepreneur. He is the founder and former CEO of InfoSpace. Due to the success of InfoSpace, he briefly became one of the richest people in the world, until the dot-com crash. He is currently a co-founder and chairman of Moon Express.

Jain was born in 1959 in India and grew up in a poor family. He saw Bill Gates as a role model for how to make a better living through business. He earned an engineering degree and an MBA before moving to the US. He worked for several tech startups, before accepting a job at Microsoft in 1989. He witnessed the $2.2 billion initial public offering of NetScape Communications in 1995, which started the dot-com bubble and he left Microsoft to start his own company, InfoSpace, in 1996, with the aim of having his own public offering. InfoSpace grew to be one of the largest internet businesses in the American northwest, making Naveen a billionaire. Jain experienced legal troubles after a series of misleading accounting practices that made the company appear more successful than it was actually.

Afterwards Jain started Intelius, a web-based security firm, in 2003 and co-founded Moon Express, a private company attempting to mine materials from the moon, in 2010.

Early life

Naveen Jain was born in 1959 and named after the religion practiced by his family, Jainism. His father was a devoted practitioner of the religion, which prohibits stealing, lying and violence.[1] His family was poor, largely because his father, who was a civil engineer, refused the common practice in Indian construction projects of accepting bribes.[2] He looked up to businesspeople that made their own fortune, especially Bill Gates.[1] Jain also had an early interest in space. He grew up in New Delhi and in villages in Uttar Pradesh, India.[1]

Jain moved to Roorkee, where in 1979 he earned an engineering degree from "a highly competitive university," Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee.[1][2] He then moved to Jamshedpur, where in 1982 he earned his MBA at XLRI School of Business and Human Resources.[2] Jain got married in 1988 and moved with his family to Seattle.[1]

Career

Early career

Jain's first job out of college was at Burroughs (now known as Unisys) in New Jersey, which recruited him as part of a business-exchange program in 1983.[3] He moved to Silicon Valley for its warmer climate and worked for "a bunch of startups"[4] before joining Microsoft in 1989.[1] He worked on OS/2, then MS-DOS, Windows NT, and Windows 95. He became the patent holder for three patents related to Windows 95 and became best-known for his work as a program manager.[2][4]

Jain joined the management team for Microsoft Network, prior to its launch.[2] According to Red Herring he became restless after eight years at the company and said he didn't feel a single person could make a difference at a large company like Microsoft.[4] The Seattle Times said he experienced "modest success" at Microsoft.[1]

InfoSpace

Naveen Jain was working on the launch of Microsoft Networks (MSN), when Netscape Communications raised $2.2 billion in an initial public offering without a profit, starting the dot-com bubble.[1] Naveen quit Microsoft to start InfoSpace in 1996, hoping to have his own initial public offering as quickly as possible.[1] He grew the company at a low cost without funding and using co-branding strategies. Rather than try to get traffic to an InfoSpace website, sites like Lycos, Excite and Playboy embedded Infospace into their site and added an InfoSpace icon to it. InfoSpace then earned money by taking a small percentage of licensing, subscription or advertising fees.[4]

Jain started InfoSpace with six employees, mostly from Microsoft, and began developing e-mail and telephone directories.[1] InfoSpace was praised by Wall Street analysts and at its peak was estimated to be worth $31 billion. It became the largest internet business in the American northwest. InfoSpace created "legions of young, overnight millionaires" and was influential in creating the dot-com bubble culture.[1] Jain's net-worth grew to $8 billion. He began purchasing expensive homes and yachts.[1]

A shareholder filed a lawsuit against InfoSpace and many of its executives, including Jain, in 2001, for allegedly misleading shareholders about the company's financials, than profiting by selling their own shares at their peak. This led to a series of additional lawsuits.[5] In 2003, after Jain had left InfoSpace, he was ordered to pay $247 million in 2003 due to alleged violations in "short-swing trading rules," whereby he bought and sold stocks within six months as an executive by virtue of setting up trusts for his children. In appeals court the Securities and Exchange Commission submitted a brief taking Jain's side,[1] which led to a settlement for $105 million.[6][7][8][9]

Jain said his stock purchasing was a mistake due to bad advice from his legal and financial advisors.[2] Following the settlement, Jain sued his stock management company and lawyers for alleged negligence in their handling of the case, but both lower courts and the Supreme Court dismissed his case.[7][10]

The board dismissed Jain from his CEO position in 2002.[5] In March 2003, InfoSpace sued Jain and others for allegedly misappropriating trade secrets from InfoSpace to start Intelius and for violating their non-compete agreement. A court found no evidence that the two actually competed and the case was dismissed.[11] In December 2004, a $83 million settlement was reached between InfoSpace and Jain, which would result in dismissal of all the cases, including the one from the shareholder, with prejudice.[5]

Post InfoSpace

In 2003, Jain co-founded Intelius, a Bellevue, Washington-based Web security firm.[2]

Naveen Jain co-founded Moon Express in August 2010. The company is attempting to build machine-operated spacecraft that can mine materials like gold, cobalt, platinum, and Helium-3 (nuclear energy fuel). It won a contract from NASA and is participating in the Google Lunar X-Prize.[1][12][13] In 2011, Jain was awarded with the "light of India Business Leadership Award" for "visionary entrepreneurship."[2]

Other activities

Jain serves on several boards related to science, technology and education. He is the chairman of the X Prize Foundation and on the board of directors for Singularity University. He's also on the board of a non-profit network of undergraduate entrepreneurs called Kairos Society, which was founded by his son.[2]

Family

Jain is married and has three children; Ankur, Priyanka and Neil.[14]

Further reading

  • Abrar, Peerzada (April 20, 2012). "How serial entrepreneur Naveen Jain turned into a billionaire". The Economic Times. Retrieved March 21, 2015.
  • Mitra, Sramana (October 14, 2014), Bootstrapping a $175 Million Business with Services: TEOCO CEO Atul Jain, One Million by One Million blog, retrieved March 21, 2015

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Heath, David (March 8, 2005). "Dot-con Job: Part 1: Dubious Deals". The Seattle Times. Retrieved June 7, 2011.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Springer, Richard. (May 9, 2011). "Intelius' Naveen Jain Turns to Moon Mining, Philanthropy". IndiaWest.com. {{cite web}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Missing or empty |url= (help)
  3. ^ Caminiti, Susan (April 3, 2014). "The billionaire's race to harness the moon's resources". CNBC. Retrieved March 21, 2015.
  4. ^ a b c d "Smarter than Bill". Red Herring. June 30, 1997. Retrieved June 7, 2011.
  5. ^ a b c Chan, Sharon (December 24, 2004). "InfoSpace, Jain reach settlement". Seattle Times. Retrieved March 22, 2015.
  6. ^ Heath, David (March 6–8, 2005). "Unusual ally came to Jain's rescue: SEC". The Seattle Times. Retrieved June 7, 2011.
  7. ^ a b "Court turns down appeal from Infospace founder". Associated Press. September 3, 2009. Retrieved June 17, 2011.
  8. ^ "Medina millionaire's rep takes another hit with $1.3 million Intelius settlement". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. August 10, 2011. Retrieved June 7, 2011.
  9. ^ Heath, David (August 23, 2003). "Ex-InfoSpace chief ordered to pay $247 million penalty". The Seattle Times. Retrieved June 7, 2011.
  10. ^ "Supreme Court Refuses To Hear InfoSpace Founder's Insider-Trading Appeal". mocoNews.net. March 10, 2009. Retrieved June 17, 2011.
  11. ^ "InfoSpace's ex-CEO Naveen Jain wins ruling on trade secrets". The Economic Times. May 29, 2003. Retrieved August 23, 2011.
  12. ^ Chow, Denise. "A 'Mine in the Sky': Moon Express Co-Founder's Lunar Ambitions". Space.com. Retrieved March 16, 2012.
  13. ^ Caulfield, Brian. "Naveen Jain: 'Think Of The Moon As Just Another Continent'". Forbes. Retrieved August 16, 2011.
  14. ^ Payne, Patti (November 15, 2009). "Siblings Ankur and Priyanka Jain threw themselves into nonprofits that help others". BizJournals.

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