James Segil started and sold three hugely successful companies and is onto his fourth. He’s currently the president and co-founder of Openpath Security, a company offering the next generation of access control for the modern workplace. Before Openpath, James was the Chief Marketing Officer for Verizon Digital Media Services and responsible for all marketing and alliances for this division of Verizon. James came to Verizon by way of the company he co-founded, EdgeCast Networks, which was acquired by Verizon in December of 2013 for a reported $400 million. Edgecast is one of the world's leading Content Delivery Networks, carrying more than 5% of global internet traffic and is the CDN technology behind many of the web's biggest cloud hosting and telecommunications companies. Prior to Edgecast, James was the co-founder and president of KnowledgeBase Solutions, which he sold to Talisma Corporation (now called Moxie Software). KnowledgeBase was ranked by Forrester as the Industry Leader in eService and was acquired by Talisma Corp in March 2005. His first venture was out of Harvard Business School, when he served as COO for Virtualis Systems Inc (rebranded Hosting.com), which he sold to Allegiance Telecom.
Before jumping into the Internet, James built his early career in consumer product marketing as a Former Product Manager for Hot Wheels Brand at Mattel Toys. James received the Ernst & Young's 2014 Entrepreneur of the Year award for the greater Los Angeles area, is an investor in and advisor to tech startups and VC/PE funds, and is active in various community and philanthropic organizations.
HERE ARE THE TAKEAWAYS FROM THE DISCUSSION WITH JAMES SEGIL: (not necessarily statements that he made directly):
1. Don’t hate on the MBA. James has built and sold three companies and is onto his fourth. Each business he and Alex started were in different sectors. Their approach to coming up with a new business concept with EdgeCast and KnowledgeBase was the same approach with Openpath. I did some digging to try to find a playbook but the reality is they’re just smart, disciplined, big thinking, creative and driven. Each time they started a company, they would create thorough business plans for 2-3 competing business ideas and legitimately invest in product development and market analysis. More MBA than riffing, wanna-be visionary entrepreneur. A Harvard MBA on its own doesn’t correlate with much but combine it with natural born entrepreneurial instincts and it provides a foundation of discipline and thoroughness to properly vet out new business models in this context.
2. Immense value of real time feedback from customers. At the app level, customers can contact Openpath for support or feedback with one click. All those communications get copied to the founders and are reviewed real-time. That connection with their customer base has proven invaluable. Recently, a message from a customer tipped them off about one of the smart phone companies possibly changing their settings. Being in the loop, it accelerated his team’s ability to get ahead of the technical issue, which could have potentially caused a negative CX.
3. Importance of passions outside of work. Whether it’s being incapable of inactivity or deliberately knowing the quality of work dividends in pursuing hobbies, James’s professional achievements have benefited from his interests outside fo work. Besides putting his sweat and blood into his businesses, James also finds time with charities such as The Giving Spirt (www.thegivingspirit.org), a non-profit improving the state of homelessness in Los Angeles, which he’s been a very active board member and volunteer for the last 15 years.