Steve Kirsch

Current

• CEO at Abaca Technology

Past

• CEO at Propel Software
• Founder at Infoseek
• Founder at Frame Technology Corporation

• Founder at Mouse Systems Corporation
• Software engineer at ROLM

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2 more...

Education

• Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Recommended

8 people have recommended Steve

Connections

500+ connections

Industry

Internet

Websites

• My Website
• My Company
• My vision for America

Steve Kirsch’s Summary

Serial entrepreneur and philanthropist. I've started 5 companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel Software, and Abaca Technology.

Abaca is attacking the spam problem. After 3 years of thinking through the problem and trying different ideas, I stumbled across receiver reputation as the ultimate approach to fighting spam. It has achieved over 99.99% accuracy in real-world use because it is based on some pretty fundamental mathematical probabilities that a spammer cannot avoid, namely, the average spam % of people hit by spammers is greater than the average spam % of people who receive mail from non-spammers. The system can be bootstrapped from an empty database with just 2 users (someone who gets a lot of spam and someone who gets a lot of ham). The amazing thing is no human is required to read or rate any email; the system gets smarter on it's own without any human intervention which makes this the ultimate, holy grail spam filter.

In my spare time, I help to rid the world of junk faxers through lawsuits and maintaining www.junkfax.org. As a result, I ended up becoming an expert on California Small Claims court and collecting judgments. About half of the junk faxes sent in America have been eliminated due to my efforts.

My charitable foundation can be found at:
www.kirschfoundation.org

The best book I've ever read is Lester Brown's Plan B 2.0. He's absolutely right that we must stabilize climate and population or we are doomed. And to do that, we must align public policy with the public interest. That means a lot of philanthropists need to put in a billion dollars into a marketing organization that will market good public policy created by a respected think tank to the public so that we can have legislation that is in the public interest, rather than in the special interests.

Steve Kirsch’s Specialties:

startup companies, spam, junk faxes, entrepreneurship, philanthropy

Steve Kirsch’s Experience

• CEO

  Abaca Technology

  (Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Internet industry)

  January 2006 — Present (3 years 11 months)

  Abaca makes an anti-spam appliance; it's the only spam appliance with a 99% accuracy guarantee.

• CEO

  Propel Software

  (Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)

  November 1999 — January 2006 (6 years 3 months)

  founder and CEO.

• Founder

  Infoseek

  (Public Company; 501-1000 employees; SEEK; Internet industry)

  November 1993 — November 1999 (6 years 1 month)

  Started the company. Invented the search engine used.

• Founder

  Frame Technology Corporation

  (Public Company; 201-500 employees; FRAM; Computer Software industry)

  April 1986 — November 1993 (7 years 8 months)

• Founder

  Mouse Systems Corporation

  (Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Hardware industry)

  July 1982 — April 1986 (3 years 10 months)

• Software engineer

  ROLM

  (Internet industry)

  1980 — 1982 (2 years )

Steve Kirsch’s Education

• Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  SB/SM , Electrical Engineering and Computer Science , September 1974 — December 1980

  Activities and Societies:

  Lecture Series Committee (Projection Director), Freshman Crew, Varsity Gymnastics, The Tech (newspaper)

Additional Information

Steve Kirsch’s Websites:

• My Website
• My Company
• My vision for America

Steve Kirsch’s Interests:

Eliminating spam

Steve Kirsch’s Groups:

former board member at:
The Tech Museum
Community Foundation Silicon Valley

•    Ex-Infoseek
•    Erlang Factory

Steve Kirsch’s Honors:

Duveneck Humanitarian Award (9th annual Hidden Villa), 2004
Legacy Award (San Jose Magazine), 2003
National Caring Award (Caring Institute), 2003
Top 10 Givers By Dollars, Worth Magazine, 2002
Leadership in Action award (Santa Clara PACT), 2002
Forbes Midas List (ranked #2 in profit), 2002
Power 100 of Silicon Valley (San Jose Magazine), 2001
Junior Achievment Hall of Fame, 2001
Top 10 Entrepreneurs of 2000 (Red Herring magazine), 2000
100 Most Generous Americans (Worth Magazine), 2000
Outstanding Leadership Award (American Lung Association), 2000
Visionary Award (Software Development Forum), 2000
Heart of Silicon Valley Award (City of Sunnyvale), 1999
Forbes ASAP list of High Tech's Wealthiest 100 (#100), 1999
The 60 largest American charitable contributions of 1999 (Slate Magazine, rated #8), 1999
Forbes ASAP list of High Tech's Wealthiest 100 (#63), 1998
Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellow, 1997
50 most influential people in cyberspace (Newsweek), 1995

Steve Kirsch’s Contact Settings

Interested In:

• job inquiries
• expertise requests
• business deals
• reference requests
• getting back in touch