Steven Gregory Woods (born June 16, 1965) is a

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

entrepreneur. He is best known for co-founding ''

Quack.com Quack.com was an early voice portal company. The domain name later was used for Quack, an iPad search application from AOL. History It was founded in 1998 by Steven Woods, Jeromy Carriere and Alex Quilici as a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, base ...

'', the first popular

Voice portal Voice portals are the voice equivalent of web portals, giving access to information through spoken commands and voice responses. Ideally a voice portal could be an access point for any type of information, services, or transactions found on the ...

platform, in 1998. Woods became the head of engineering for

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. ...

Canada where he was until 2021, when he joined Canadian

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 ...

firm iNovia Capital as partner and CTO, following in the footsteps of

Patrick Pichette Patrick Pichette, is a Canadian businessman and executive. He was senior vice president and chief financial officer of Google from 2008 until 2015. He then became a venture capital fund manager, and is a director for several companies and a fo ...

, Google's CFO who also joined iNovia after leaving Google.

Career

Born in

Melfort, Saskatchewan Melfort (Canada 2016 Census, 2016 population 5,992) is a city in Saskatchewan, Canada, located approximately southeast of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Prince Albert, northeast of Saskatoon and north of Regina, Saskatchewan, Regina. Melfort be ...

, Woods holds a Ph.D and M.Math from the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario Waterloo is a city in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is one of three cities in the Regional Municipality ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

and a B.Sc. from the

University of Saskatchewan A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...

. He was the first Ph.D student of Professor

Qiang Yang Qiang Yang () (born 1963) is the Chair Professor, Department Head of CSE, HKUST in Hong Kong and University New Bright Professor of Engineering and Chair Professor from 2015. He was the founding head of Noah's Ark Lab. He had taught at the Univer ...

. Woods' Ph.D was published in 1997 as a book co-written with

Alex Quilici Alex Quilici is an American engineer and businessman. He is a national source of information about robocalls for consumer protection groups, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The FCC's staff, congregational legislators and their teleco ...

and

entitled "Constraint-Based Design Recovery for Software Reengineering: Theory and Experiments" He then worked for

Carnegie Mellon Carnegie may refer to: People * Carnegie (surname), including a list of people with the name * Clan Carnegie, a lowland Scottish clan Institutions Named for Andrew Carnegie *Carnegie Building (Troy, New York), on the campus of Rensselaer Polyt ...

Software Engineering Institute The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) is an American research and development center headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Its activities cover cybersecurity, software assurance, software engineering and acquisition, and component capabil ...

on product line development and practical software architectural reconstruction and analysis. In 1998 Woods co-founded Pittsburgh-based voice-portal infrastructure company Quackware with

Jeromy Carriere Steven Jeromy Carrière is a Canadian computer software engineer. Carrière is a graduate of the University of Waterloo in Canada. He was technical staff member at Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute working on practical so ...

and

. Quackware became Quack.com in 1999 and moved headquarters to

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 ...

. It was funded September 1, 1999, and acquired August 31, 2000 by

America Online AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...

. Quack.com claimed to be the first

Voice Portal Voice portals are the voice equivalent of web portals, giving access to information through spoken commands and voice responses. Ideally a voice portal could be an access point for any type of information, services, or transactions found on the ...

, and held patents around interactive voice applications, including "System and method for voice access to internet-based information". Woods was vice president of voice services for America Online and

Netscape Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was onc ...

after the acquisition of Quack.com in September, 2000. He founded NeoEdge in 2002 under the name Kinitos along with former

, and

colleagues including

. He served as an officer and on the board of directors from 2001 through 2010 in

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was estab ...

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 ...

. Woods was the engineering director for

in Canada from 2008 to 2021, where he joined joined Canadian

firm iNovia Capital as partner and CTO.

Achievements

While at the University of Waterloo, Woods captained the varsity

Waterloo Warriors The Waterloo Warriors are the athletic teams that represent the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The Warriors have found success over certain spans in football, hockey, rugby, golf and basketball among others, and the Warriors ...

golf team and in 1995 was co-winner of the

Ontario University Athletics Ontario University Athletics (OUA; french: Sports universitaires de l'Ontario) is a regional membership association for Canadian universities which assists in co-ordinating competition between their university level athletic programs and providin ...

"Len Shore Trophy" for top individual performance. During 1991-1992 Woods was a member of the

Canberra Knights The Canberra Knights were a semi-professional ice hockey team in the Australian Ice Hockey League (AIHL). The team played its home games at the Phillip Swimming & Ice Skating Centre in Phillip, a suburb of Australia's capital city, Canberra. In ...

semi-professional ice hockey in the

Australian Ice Hockey League The Australian Ice Hockey League (AIHL) is Australia's top-level ice hockey league. Established in 2000, the AIHL is sanctioned by Ice Hockey Australia (a member of the International Ice Hockey Federation). The league is run by its own board of ...

. Woods was awarded the J.W. Graham Medal for Computing and Innovation by the

in 2010.

References

External links

Research Publications by Steven Woods
{{DEFAULTSORT:Woods, Steven University of Waterloo alumni University of Saskatchewan alumni Canadian businesspeople Software engineering researchers People from Melfort, Saskatchewan Living people 1965 births J.W. Graham Medal awardees Google employees

Career

Achievements

See also

References

External links