Sam Dinkin

Current

• Auction Design and Implementation Expert at Full Spectrum Auctions (Sole Proprietorship)
• Founder and CEO at SpaceShot, Inc.

Past

• Frequent Contributer at The Space Review
• Chief Economist at Optimal Auctions, Inc.
• Research Staff Member at IBM TJ Watson Research

• Senior Economist at LECG
• Senior Associate at Charles River Associates, Inc.

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Education

• University of Arizona
• Caltech

Recommended

11 people have recommended Sam

Connections

110 connections

Industry

Utilities

Sam Dinkin’s Summary

Sam Dinkin is an expert in the design and implementation of high stakes auctions. He has designed and conducted 50+ auctions for over $150 billion in energy and spectrum auctions. Dr. Dinkin has refined and tested economic theory of common value auctions (American Economic Review, 1999 and Experimental Economics, 2001, joint with Vernon Smith, James Cox and James Swarthout). His clock auction rules are the model for the world's four largest multi-unit electricity auctions. He was the domain lead for auction software for three auction software vendors and two fortune 50 companies. His auction management experience includes the New Jersey BGS Auction, the largest annual multi-unit electricity auction. Two current projects are auctions for ICANN, and the first US government greenhouse gas auction for ten states. He has helped national governments with their first multi-unit telecom auctions in seven countries and has assisted numerous bidding teams on six continents. He is a 7th plateau IBM master inventor who has won an achievement award for IBM's electronic market consulting offering. He received his B.S. in economics from Caltech, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Arizona characterizing, implementing and experimentally testing an 8-person 5400-round continuous combinatorial job-processing auction with one-second rounds hosted on a 386 computer. He was one of the top 200 scorers nationwide in the MAA college math competition and represented the US at the World Junior Bridge Championships.

(888) 434-6546 Voice
(512) 347-9149 Fax
3101 Lating Stream Lane
Austin, TX 78746-2004

Sam Dinkin’s Specialties:

Auction design and implementation, auctioneering, bid strategy

Sam Dinkin’s Experience

• Auction Design and Implementation Expert

  Full Spectrum Auctions (Sole Proprietorship)

  (Sole Proprietorship; Myself Only; Wireless industry)

  April 2006 — Present (2 years 4 months)

  * One of the six experts selected by Industry Canada for 2008-2012 telecom auction expert advice
  * Auction specialist for first US government greenhouse gas auction for 10 states in 2008
  * Auctioneer for two high-stakes electricity auctions and software and rules advice for four; buying capacity for over 100 million people in 8 US States and 2 countries
  * Auction for $1 billion/year for main product of a business line at a global 500 company
  * Bid strategy advice for two clients in North America and Europe wireless telecom auctions
  * Wireless auction software for European government
  * Selected by ICANN as expert for domain name auctions

• Founder and CEO

  SpaceShot, Inc.

  (Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Online Media industry)

  October 2004 — Present (3 years 10 months)

  SpaceShot, Inc., http://www.space-shot.com, is producing a non-dexterity skill game that will offer Rocketplane suborbital flights as prizes.

• Frequent Contributer

  The Space Review

  (Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Online Media industry)

  May 2004 — June 2008 (4 years 2 months)

  Volunteer space writer for The Space Review, http://www.thespacereview.com.

• Chief Economist

  Optimal Auctions, Inc.

  (Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Computer Software industry)

  October 2000 — December 2007 (7 years 3 months)

  Founded in '98 based on my idea, auctioned $150B in cost of goods sold, surpassed by eBay in '04.
  •NJ BGS 2001-7 $25B in energy at $2.4B less per year than NY (36%) with auction responsible for 1/3 savings
  •Domain lead, software for Illinois Auction, bought full requirements for 12.8 million of rate payers in Illinois
  •Domain lead, software for Electricity Distribution auction for 40 million Spain rate payers
  •Testifying expert, regs writer & req's manager for Texas PUC capacity 2002-5 15% of TX capacity
  •Singapore 3G, Italy LMDS telecom auctions

• Research Staff Member

  IBM TJ Watson Research

  (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; IBM; Research industry)

  March 1999 — September 2000 (1 year 7 months)

  •Primary investigator for experimental economics study of technical services e-Market
  •Co-responsible for building $2M experimental and computational economics laboratory, experimental economics software and economics evangelism
  •Conceived, proposed and led team to conduct a $3M project and progenitor of another $13.5M follow-up project
  •70 patent filing awards 2000-2002, 31 published by USPTO 2002-2005
  •8 patents granted: 6539947, 6442018, 6329919 "the 919 patent", 6339736, 6591253, 6603965, 6631309, 6615113
  •Award winning intellectual input into industry leading e-Markets strategy offering and marketing material
  •Advised IBM on M&A, Fluor-IBM JV, the IBM IPN spin-off and Informix merger
  •Business method patent evangelism, chair of invention committee, progenitor of a class of invention incentive awards
  •Marketplaces evangelism

• Senior Economist

  LECG

  (Public Company; 201-500 employees; XPRT; Wireless industry)

  April 1997 — February 1999 (1 year 11 months)

  •Chevron strategy, training PDVSA auction resulting in a front page WSJ article lauding Chevron
  •Lead strategist for Qualcomm in Brazil Telebras Mirror Auction devising a regulatory strategy praised by Irwin Jacobs, Chairman of Qualcomm
  •Advised Qualcomm/Leap in Mexico 2G Auction strategy gave option they exercised on Mexico City that risked $100M receiving personal congratulations from Leap CEO, Harvey White
  •Advised PTT Telecom in Netherlands 2G Auction devising innovative strategy achieving the best licenses for $100M less than competitors
  •Qualcomm, Australia 2G
  •Assembled team, wrote winning proposal, project manager for $1M FCC combinatorial auction project
  •Assembled team including Vernon Smith & wrote losing proposal to run CALPX
  •Industry Canada 28 GHz auction
  •Guatemala Trunk Radio auction
  •Managed programming, QA for new auction software & decision support system
  •Installation of auction software in Mexico and Guatemala

• Senior Associate

  Charles River Associates, Inc.

  (Public Company; 201-500 employees; CRAI; Wireless industry)

  August 1996 — March 1997 (8 months)

  * Wrote winning proposal for $1M FCC combinatorial auction design project
  * Auction theory expert co-designing the first advanced auctions for Canada (LMDS), Mexico (Paging) and Australia (Spectrum Manager)
  * Auction theory expert co-designing a real estate auction
  * Gathered client requirements and managed programming for electronic auction and bid tracking software upgrade
  * Head of quality control for electronic auction software
  * Assisted in international installation of auction software in Mexico and Canada
  * Conducted bidder training in Mexico’s first advanced auction for Paging Spectrum
  * Designed combinatorial mineral rights auction for Mexico
  * Designed and coded automatic bidding agents for electronic auction

Sam Dinkin’s Education

• University of Arizona

  Ph.D., Economics, August 1991 — December 1996

  * Thesis advisor Vernon Smith, Nobel Prize 2002
  * AER article on Common Value Auctions
  * US Team 1 World Junior Bridge Championships (25 and under)

  Activities and Societies:

  Bridge Club, Graduate Student Council

• Caltech

  B.S., Economics, September 1987 — June 1991

  * VP of Ricketts
  * Treasurer of Caltech Y
  * Bridge Column "Bridge with Sam"
  * National Collegiate Bridge Championships 2nd place twice
  * Rewrote bylaws of ASCIT and Caltech Y
  * Restarted debate team
  * MAA Putnam 42/120 good for top 200 in country
  * SURF research with Bruce Cain on Reagan Democrats

  Activities and Societies:

  Debate Team, Bridge Club, Caltech Y, Ricketts House, California Tech, ASCIT

Additional Information

Sam Dinkin’s Interests:

Family fun, space policy, journalism, bridge, strategy computer games, running, lifting, science fiction

Sam Dinkin’s Groups:

Space Frontier Foundation
River Oaks Home Owners Association Board

•    Caltech Alumni Association member

Sam Dinkin’s Honors:

* Space Frontier Foundation Space Advocate, 10/2005-
* University of Texas Law School Keeton Fellow 2001-
* University of Texas Law School Dean's Round Table 2001-
* IBM Master Inventor, 7th plateau 2000
* IBM Acheivement Award, award winning marketplaces strategy consulting offering 2000
* US Junior Bridge Team (25 and under) 1993-4

Sam Dinkin’s Contact Settings

Interested In:

• career opportunities
• consulting offers
• new ventures
• job inquiries
• expertise requests
• business deals
• reference requests
• getting back in touch