Randy Komisar is a technology attorney, executive, and author living in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. Komisar is the co-founder of Claris, former CEO of Lucas Arts Entertainment,

Chief Financial Officer The chief financial officer (CFO) is an officer of a company or organization that is assigned the primary responsibility for managing the company's finances, including financial planning, management of financial risks, record-keeping, and financ ...

GO Corp GO Corporation was founded in 1987 to create portable computers, an operating system, and software with a pen-based user interface. It was famous not only for its pioneering work in Pen-based computing but as well as being one of the most well- ...

, and the "virtual CEO" of

TiVo TiVo ( ) is a digital video recorder (DVR) developed and marketed by Xperi (previously by TiVo Corporation and TiVo Inc.) and introduced in 1999. TiVo provides an on-screen guide of scheduled broadcast programming television programs, whose fea ...

Early career

Komisar attended

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

for undergraduate studies and received a J.D. from

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...

. He practiced law in the

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

area until he managed the legal aspects of the acquisition of

Pixar Pixar Animation Studios (commonly known as Pixar () and stylized as P I X A R) is an American computer animation studio known for its critically and commercially successful computer animated feature films. It is based in Emeryville, Californi ...

Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; a ...

. Following the acquisition, he went to work for

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...

, where he worked on the project to license the

Macintosh operating systems Two major famlies of Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc. In 1984, Apple debuted the operating system that is now known as the "Classic" Mac OS with its release of the original Macintosh System Software. The system, rebranded " ...

Apollo Computer Apollo Computer Inc., founded in 1980 in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, by William Poduska (a founder of Prime Computer) and others, developed and produced Apollo/Domain workstations in the 1980s. Along with Symbolics and Sun Microsystems, Apollo wa ...

. Following the refusal of the board to license the operating system, Komisar accepted a job to co-found

Claris Claris International Inc., formerly FileMaker Inc., is a computer software development company formed as a subsidiary company of Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) in 1987. It was given the source code and copyrights to several programs that were ...

Claris

Apple decided to spin software products off to a third party, creating Claris in 1987. Komisar was asked by Bill Campbell to become a co-founder of the company and ran a number of acquisitions. While at Claris, Komisar negotiated deals with Filemaker, which the company would morph into over time, but failed to negotiate an attempt to acquire

Quark A quark () is a type of elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter. Quarks combine to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable of which are protons and neutrons, the components of atomic nuclei. All commonly o ...

. Claris would later announce intentions to go public. Apple declined the option for Claris to file for an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

, leading to each executive selling their shares.

Chief Executive and Venture Capital

Komisar would go on to work with a number of notable technology startups: * Komisar served on the

Board of Directors A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organiz ...

WebTV MSN TV (formerly WebTV) was a web access product consisting of a thin client device that used a television for display (instead of using a computer monitor), and the online service that supported it. The device design and service was developed by ...

prior to the 1995 acquisition by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

* CFO of GO Corp * CEO of LucasArts Entertainment * CEO of Crystal Dynamics * Originally intending to create a home network device,

would digitize video on a set top box for a monthly service at the suggestion of andy Komisarand make him a founding director. * Komisar would serve as "virtual CEO of GlobalGiving * Early-stage investment advisor at

Kleiner Perkins Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneurs ...

(since 2005) * Serves on the board and advises Gusto, Motiv,

Veem Veem, formerly Align Commerce, is a San Francisco-based online global payments platform founded in 2014 by Marwan Forzley and Aldo Carrascoso. The company uses a payment routing method they refer to as "multi-rail technology," where transactions ...

* Served on the board and advised Graphiq until they were acquired by

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...

* Served on the board and advised

Google Nest Google Nest is a line of home automation, smart home products including smart speakers, smart displays, streaming devices, Smart thermostat, thermostats, smoke detectors, Router (computing), routers and security alarms, security systems includ ...

until they were acquired by

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

* Served on the board and advised RPX Corporation until they were acquired by HGGC

Author

Komisar has written a number of books about entrepreneurialism and

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

: *''The Monk and the Riddle'' *''Getting to Plan B'' *''I F*cking Love That Company'' *''Straight Talk for Startups''

Non-Profit Work

* Roadtrip Nation Advisory Board * Orrick's Women's Leadership Board

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Komisar, Randy Brown University alumni Harvard Law School alumni Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) American lawyers American technology chief executives American male non-fiction writers People from the San Francisco Bay Area