Randy Adams
| Randy Adams | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Bar Harbor, Maine |
| Occupation | Serial Entrepreneur[1] |
Randy Adams (born 1952 in Bar Harbor, Maine) is an American serial entrepreneur funded by Sequoia Capital and Draper Associates in Menlo Park, California in the Silicon Valley, and a founder of nine venture capital backed companies including Will Ferrell's popular comedy site, Funny or Die.[1][2][3] and Marlon Wayans' comedy site What The Funny,[4] and VR/AR software company Treefrog.[1] Over the course of his 30 year career in Silicon Valley he has raised more than $250 million in venture capital and returned more than $28 billion to investors.
He was educated at Mount Desert Island High School in Bar Harbor before moving on to MIT, where he graduated as a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering.[1]
Adams is credited with managing the team which invented Adobe Acrobat and PDF,[5] helping Jerry Yang and David Filo at Yahoo secure initial financing with Sequoia Capital,[6] and creating the first e-commerce web site, the Internet Shopping Network [7] in 1993.
Adams has lectured at Stanford University on the art of being an entrepreneur.[8]
His former positions include software architect at NeXT Inc. where he worked directly with Steve Jobs and has lots of "Steve Stories", CEO, Emerald City Software, Director of Engineering at Adobe Systems, CEO of Appsoft, Inc. where he again worked with Steve Jobs, CEO of the Internet Shopping Network where he taught Barry Diller about the Internet, CEO of Navitel, Inc., CEO of NewsNet where he developed software for Bill Gates, CEO of AuctionDrop, Inc.,[9] CEO of Searchme, and member of the board of directors at Yahoo and Funny Or Die.[1]
He lives in the Pleasanton, California with his wife and three children and is currently writing a book on the power brokers of silicon valley.[1]