User:Parkhunt

David R. Thompson (b.1963) is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and marketing pioneer. He was chief marketing officer and on the founding leadership team of WebEx, an online conferencing service provider, which was sold to Cisco Systems for $3.2 billion in 2007.

In 2005 Thompson left WebEx and co-founded Genius.com, an email marketing and website tracking software company, with his long time friend Robert Seidl, and became CEO of Ceneca Software, the developer of PageMill, the first visual web page editor. Today Thompson also hold the title of CEO.

Contents [hide]

* 1 Early life * 2 Initial Tech Experience * 3 The WebEx Years * 4 Leading Genius.com * 5 See also * 6 References

[edit] Early life

David R. Thompson was raised in a religious household in the town of ???. Upon completion of high school Thompson attended Yale (from xx to yy) where he studied Theatre. After a brief time in New York Thompson gave up life in the Theater and in YR headed to San Francisco, CA and took a class in computer programming at San Francisco City College which would lead to his start in Silicon Valley.

[edit] Initial Tech Experience

Throughout his career Thompson has held a variety of senior management positions in products, technical strategy and marketing for such notable companies as Quarterdeck, Microsoft, Genentech, Pacific Bell, and his first startup, StarNine Technologies.

[edit] The WebEx Years

Thompson served at WebEx Communications, from 1998 through late 2004 as vice president of product marketing and then chief marketing officer. While at WebEx, Thompson shipped award-winning web conferencing products that reinvigorated the category, named the company and directed legendary marketing campaigns that vaulted WebEx to #1 in on-demand software.

Thompson is heralded for creating the legendary “Meetings are a Drag” campaign that featured the green and blue bedecked drag queen, RuPaul, who touted the benefits of online meetings in front of millions of Super Bowl television viewers. The campaign was a breakthrough for its unconventionality as well as its high-priced placement and reach, which was a Valley first and has been much-emulated since.

Thompson architected WebEx’s industry-leading “Sales 2.0” lead-generation system, integrating innovative e-mail and web marketing technologies to drive a large volume and velocity of sales leads. By the time of Thompson's departure in 2005, WebEx had acquired more than 12,000 customers and generated $250M in revenues with posted operating margins of 20 percent.

On March 15, 2007,Cisco Systems agreed to purchase WebEx for $3.2 billion.

[edit] Leading Genius.com

Currently Thompson is co-founder and CEO of Genius.com, the leading on-demand provider of B-to-B marketing solutions. Besides his duties as CEO Thompson also founded the Sales 2.0 movement and conference which debuted October 30, 2007. He has also co-authored the popular Sales 2.0 For Dummies book which provides tips and technologies that sales and marketers can use to speed up their sales cycles.

[edit] See also

* WebEx * Subrah Iyar * Min Zhu