Bill Gross founded Idealab in March 1996 and serves as the company's Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer. Bill founded Idealab to create and build successful businesses that capitalize on innovations in areas with significant growth opportunities, including the Internet.
A lifelong entrepreneur, Bill started several companies prior to Idealab. In high school, he founded Solar Devices, a firm that sold plans and kits for solar energy products. In college at the California Institute of Technology, he patented a new loudspeaker design and formed GNP Loudspeakers, Inc. After graduating from college, Bill and his brother Larry started GNP Development, Inc., which made a natural language product for Lotus 1-2-3 called HAL. In 1985, Lotus Development Corporation acquired GNP and Bill became a software entrepreneur at Lotus Development. In 1991, Bill started Knowledge Adventure, an educational software publisher that grew to be the third largest educational software publisher in the world and was eventually sold to Cendant Software and is now a division of Havas Interactive, which is owned by Vivendi.
Bill serves on the boards of directors of numerous companies. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the California Institute of Technology. Bill received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology.
This is a presentation delivered at the Web 2.0 Conference held in San Francisco, CA, October 5-7, 2004. Our thanks go to MediaLive International and O'Reilly Media, the producers of Web 2.0, for permission to bring you this session, one of many from Web 2.0 here on IT Conversations.
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