User:Dragonjen/sandbox

Jeff Cavins is a technologist, entrepreneur, executive leader in the tech community and founder of Outdoorsy, Inc. Career[edit] He started his own company at age 20 and developed his first commercial product; while visiting the athletic dept. at the University of Houston, he devised an idea and developed a product that became known as the coaches clicker, a remote control that enabled College Football Coaches to review game film footage in forward / reverse, slo-mo and freeze-frame modes. The product gained widespread adoption among Southwest Conference Football programs. He moved to Los Angeles to pursue larger scale engineering work and joined the Department of Defense as a Broadcast Systems Engineer. While working for the DOD and assigned to the US Air Force "AeroSpace AudioVisual Service at Norton AFB, he relocated to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, living there for over a year. His task was the retrofitting of technologies and systems at Govt. owned Honduran TV stations and worked on News and Documentation of US military projects in Central America. He worked with US Intelligence in Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador on the project known as "Ahuas Tara II".[1] In the early 1980's, he served as the lead video engineer and worked on the team that documented the deployment of Nuclear Cruise Missiles at the Greenham Common Airbase in England. Upon returning to Los Angeles, he worked as a contract engineer for ABC during the 84 summer Olympics. From his work on the "coaches clicker" while at the University of Houston, he was contacted and recruited by Sony Broadcast to join the company as the lead engineer on a new project; to convert the NFL from film to video for game and coaching analysis. He was tasked with continuing the development of the technology, migrating the NFL to Sony's Broadcast Video product line with the features of the "coaches clicker". This work resulted in the NFL's deployment of Sony's video broadcast systems for game and competitive analysis. During his work with the NFL, he developed the instant replay system for the NFL and debuted it on Sept 7, 1986 in Chicago where the Bears hosted the Cleveland Browns.[2] After receiving the The Samurai award at Sony in 1990, Cavins left to start his own company, called CSI Digital. The company marketed computer and software systems used for visual effects and digital editing, which became popular in feature films, episodic, commercial television and target platform games, such as Mortal Kombat and Donkey Kong. With the explosion of visual effects in films such as "Fifth Element"," Independence Day", "American Werewolf in Paris", "Babylon Five", "Twister", "Godzilla" and "Titanic", CSI experienced rapid growth and won first place in the inaugural Deloitte and Touche "Fast-50" award program (in WA State, where the company was headquartered),[3][4] and was also recognized by Inc 500 as the 100th fastest growing private company in America (1997).[5]After selling the company, Cavins joined Exodus Communications and became SVP of North American Sales and Services. The company grew rapidly, from $100M to over $1.3B in revenue. After Exodus was acquired by Cable & Wireless in 2002, Cavins left to join Loudeye as CEO.[6] During early 2003, he negotiated a deal with Apple to provide music, rights, metadata and cover art for a new service Apple would soon launch (in April of 2003), called iTunes.[7] Loudeye grew rapidly and acquired Peter Gabriel's (the musician behind "Your Eyes", "Shock The Monkey" and "Sledgehammer") company in Europe, called OD2.[8]Loudeye then powered over 80 music services world-wide, continuing to grow rapidly, becoming one of the most actively traded NASDAQ stocks. The company was acquired by Nokia in 2006. In 2006, Cavins joined Azure Capital as a venture advisor and in 2008, he joined Callwave as CEO.[9] During the 2008 stock market crises, he initiated a plan to take Callwave private. The company was officially taken private after a tender offer to shareholders, on June 30, 2009. While at Callwave, he started a cloud based software product called "Fuze", which he brainstormed with product co-founder, Michael Buday. Fuze was a SaaS product that enabled end users to collaborate with documents and high resolution media in real time and in sync with all users. In 2011, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, began using Fuze on his iPad and included Fuze in Apple's global TV ad campaign called "We Will Always", a world-wide ad campaign targeted to mobile, day to day users of iPad.[10]He then launched a strategy to monetize Callwave's large patent portfolio and in 2012, he split the company into two parts - FuzeBox and CallWave. He raised $20M in venture funding for FuzeBox and hired Richard Sanders, a renowned I.P. litigator from Cooley, LLP in Boston, to take over as CEO of CallWave. In 2013, FuzeBox was recognized by Inc 500 as the the 125th fastest growing private company in America. He raised an additional $26M in growth capital for FuzeBox in 2013 and recruited a new senior management team from Yammer. [11] In late 2013, he left to spend time on his other board work and formulate the investment theses for his new startup - Outdoorsy, a Peer to Peer, consumer marketplace for RV owners and renters. Cavins joined the board of directors of Human BioMolecular Research Institute (HBRI) in San Diego. HBRI unlocks biological and chemical principles related to diseases of the human brain. HBRI's research is designed for the public good. In 2012, HBRI announced that it had synthesized and tested ITD-1, a man made chemical that successfully generated new heart cells from stem cells.[12]Cavins then joined the board of directors of ChemRegen, a state of the art stem cell biology and regenerative medicine research and development company founded by Dr. John Cashman in collaboration with Dr. Mark Mercola of the Sanford Burnham Research Institute (a recognized authority on drug development).[13] In 2014, Cavins continued working on the investment thesis for Outdoorsy. He was joined by co-founders Jennifer Young, a former managing director from J. Walter Thompson, Mat Ryer, author of "Go Programming Blueprints", Ryan Quinn, a seasoned software developer and Tyler Bunnell, also a seasoned software developer. The service is targeted to an audience of 45 million passionate users of recreational vehicles and outdoor enthusiasts. References[edit] Jump up ^ "Ahuas Tara ii". Retrieved 18 February 2015. Jump up ^ "History of Instant Replay in the NFL". Bleacherreport. Retrieved 18 February 2015. Jump up ^ "CSI Wins first D&T Fast 50". The Spokesman Review. Retrieved 18 February 2015. Jump up ^ "Ahuas Tara ii". Jump up ^ "CSI Ranked 100 by Inc 500". Farlex. The Free Library. October 20, 1997. Retrieved 18 February 2015. Jump up ^ "Videoconferencing Startup FuzeBox Nabs $20 Million". Business Insider. Jump up ^ "FuzeBox Raises $26 Million For European Expansion, Names Former Yammer Executive David Obrand As CEO". TechCrunch. Jump up ^ "CSI Acquires OD2". PR Newswire. June 22, 2004. Retrieved 18 February 2015. Jump up ^ "FuzeBox Raises $20M For Online Meetings And Collaboration, Round Led By Index Ventures". TechCrunch. Jump up ^ "We Will Always". Retrieved July 24, 2011. Jump up ^ "FuzeBox raises $26M, adds new team". Gigaom. Jump up ^ "HBRI makes Heart Cells out of Stem Cells". HBRI. Retrieved 18 February 2015. Jump up ^ "ChemRegen - dedicated to the discovery of degenerative medicine". ChemRegen. Retrieved 18 February 2015. Categories: Living people