entrepreneur
San Francisco Bay Area
- Current
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- President at fotonauts
- Business Partner at Techcrunch
- Director at EarningsCast
- Past
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- ceo at edgeio corporation
- Consultant at VeriSign
- Prersident/CEO/Chairman at Santa Cruz Networks
- CEO, President, Chairman at RealNames Corporation
- Chairman & Director at NetNames
- Founder at CYBERIA, Cybercafe Ltd
- CTO, Founder at The EasyNet Group
- Founder, CEO at cScape.com
- Recommended
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5 people have recommended Keith - Connections
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500+
connections
- Industry
- Internet
- Websites
Keith Teare’s Summary
I was founder or co-founder of two companies that achieved $billion valuations or greater.
The EasyNet Group plc: UK. Founded in 1994 as one of the first ISP’s in Europe, I was CTO and co-founder. EasyNet went public on the AIM exchange in London in 1996 and by 1999 was trading at a valuation of more than $1 billion. In 2007 it was acquired by Rupert Murdoch’s B Sky B where Teare’s co-founder, David Rowe is still CEO of the division, for around $400million.
RealNames Corporation, founded in Palo Alto in 1998. I was founder and CEO. The company created a multi-lingual naming system, with distinct national namespaces, sitting on top of the DNS. It used natural language keywords, mapped to URI’s to allow native language navigation. I raised more than $130m in venture funding and filed for an IPO (led by Morgan Stanley, with Mary Meeker as lead analyst) in 1999. After negotiating a world-wide agreement to include RealNames in the Microsoft browser in early 2000, the company filed an amended S1, and had an implied valuation of more than $1.5bn. The bursting of the Internet bubble meant the company stayed private, but prospered. By 2002 it was responsible for over 1 billion keyword navigations per quarter. it had agreements in Japan, China and Korea and was responsible for supporting the nascent multi-lingual DNS system run by Verisign. In Q1 2002 Microsoft decided to cease to support the technology. 1 billion page views previously resolved by RealNames were redirected to the MSN search service. This resulted in the closure of the company in Q2 2002.
In addition to these 2 very large projects I am credited with also being the founder of edgeio corporation; the seed funder of NetNames (the world’s first domain name registrar, created by Ivan Pope); the founder of cScape, a leading UK systems integrator; and co-founder of CYBERIA, the world’s first Internet Cafe.
Keith Teare’s Specialties:
Business Strategy
Technical Strategy
Product Strategy
Evangelizing
Communicating
Keith Teare’s Experience
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President
fotonauts
(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Internet industry)
February 2008 — Present (9 months)
fotonauts is a stealth startup, created by Jean-Marie Hullot, former CTO of NeXt and of Apple Applications Division.
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Business Partner
Techcrunch
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Media Production industry)
March 2005 — Present (3 years 8 months)
I am Mike Arrington's business partner in Techcrunch. I'm the one who advised him not to do it :-).
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Director
EarningsCast
(Internet industry)
2004 — Present (4 years)
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ceo
edgeio corporation
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)
March 2005 — December 2007 (2 years 10 months)
Mike Arrington and myself started edgeio to facilitate the publishing and syndication of listings. edgeio is a state of the art platform for aggregation and distribution of content and is able to do so in near real time.
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Consultant
VeriSign
(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; VRSN; Internet industry)
June 2004 — April 2005 (11 months)
I helped lead a team working on understanding the market opportunities for VeriSign's Naming and Directory Services team. This project ended successfully in a strategy for growth over the next several years in a new market area for the division.
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Prersident/CEO/Chairman
Santa Cruz Networks
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)
March 2003 — June 2004 (1 year 4 months)
Was Chief Executive of this Real Time Communications over IP company.
A great 15 months, during which I learned a lot about the IP Communications space, and particularly the emerging voice, video and data (converged IP communications) network.
Rebranded the company, launched VidiTel, built a distributed platform for service providers, and took the sales run rate up from about $350k a year to about $2.4m a year without raising expenses.
In April 2004 I raised the first close of the company’s ‘C’ round, a $3.5m investment and passed the baton to the new CEO at the close of the round. -
CEO, President, Chairman
RealNames Corporation
(Privately Held; 201-500 employees; Internet industry)
January 1998 — June 2002 (4 years 6 months)
Founded and took this company to S1 filing with Morgan Stanley. Profitable in Q1 2002. Microsoft as 20% shareholder. VeriSign as 10% shareholder.
Company closed following Microsoft decision to take technology inhouse, and not renew contract :-( -
Chairman & Director
NetNames
(Public Company; 51-200 employees; NBT.L; Internet industry)
January 1998 — July 2001 (3 years 7 months)
I seed funded NetNames. We sold it to NetBenefit in 2000. I was a board member of the merged entity through 2001. NetNames was the world's first domain name reseller, founded by Ivan Pope and Anthony Van Couvering.
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Founder
CYBERIA, Cybercafe Ltd
(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Internet industry)
August 1994 — September 2000 (6 years 2 months)
Founded the world's first Cybercafe. With Eva Pascoe, Gene McPherson, David Rowe.
We franchsed it around the world, including in the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Financed my Maurice Saatchi and Jean Pigotzzi
Great fun, poor business. Oh well! -
CTO, Founder
The EasyNet Group
(Public Company; 501-1000 employees; ESY.L; Internet industry)
June 1994 — November 1996 (2 years 6 months)
Britain's second consumer facing ISP. Took it public in 1996. Now one of Europes largest DSL carriers, and a telco. CEO is David Rowe, my co-founder.
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Founder, CEO
cScape.com
(Public Company; 51-200 employees; NEB.L; Internet industry)
September 1983 — June 1994 (10 years 10 months)
I founded cscape as "Brent Computer Services" in the early 1980's. We designed networks (Novell and later Microsoft based) and databases. We supported customers who bought our integrated solutions. Customers include Mobil Oil, Warner Music, The Institute of Personnel and Development (IPD), and many municipal authorities.
We sold it to NetB2B2 as an operating company withing the group in 2001. My co-founder, Brian Teare, remains CTO.
Additional Information
Keith Teare’s Websites:
Keith Teare’s Honors:
Computerworld Smithsonian Laureate, for visionary use of information technology. 2001. For RealNames.
British Telecom award for innovation, 1996. For CYBERIA Cafe.
