Brian L. Hinman (born August 22, 1961 in

Bethesda, Maryland Bethesda () is an unincorporated, census-designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. Located just northwest of Washington, D.C., it is a major business and government center of the Washington metropolitan region ...

) is an entrepreneur and investor in high technology businesses, especially the computer-based communications industry. Hinman founded three successful (annual revenues greater than $500 million) high technology companies;

PictureTel Corp. PictureTel Corporation was one of the first commercial videoconferencing product companies. It achieved peak revenues of over $490 million in 1996 and 1997 and was eventually acquired by Polycom in October 2001. History PictureTel was founded ...

(

Videoconferencing Videotelephony (also known as videoconferencing or video calling) is the use of audio signal, audio and video for simultaneous two-way communication. Today, videotelephony is widespread. There are many terms to refer to videotelephony. ''Vide ...

Polycom Poly Inc., formerly Polycom, is an American multinational corporation that develops video, voice and content collaboration and communication technology. Poly is a subsidiary of HP Inc. Polycom was co-founded in 1990 by Brian L Hinman and Jeff ...

(

Conference call A conference call (sometimes called an audio teleconference or ATC) is a telephone call in which several people share a telephone line at the same time. The conference call may be designed to allow the called party to participate during the cal ...

), and

2Wire 2Wire, Inc. was a computer hardware manufacturer active from 1998 to 2010 that provided telecommunications companies with home networking hardware, software, service platforms, and remote Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) management systems. The ...

(

digital subscriber line Digital subscriber line (DSL; originally digital subscriber loop) is a family of technologies that are used to transmit digital data over telephone lines. In telecommunications marketing, the term DSL is widely understood to mean asymmetric dig ...

). Both

and

had

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...

s. Hinman and his co-founders took PictureTel public in November 1984, three months after the company was founded, and two years before the first product was shipped.

was acquired by set-top box maker Pace in July, 2010. Hinman has been granted patents in

video compression In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compression ...

and

conference call A conference call (sometimes called an audio teleconference or ATC) is a telephone call in which several people share a telephone line at the same time. The conference call may be designed to allow the called party to participate during the cal ...

Early life and education

Hinman, the son of Earl E Hinman, Jr and Roberta D. Hinman, grew up primarily in Wheaton, Maryland Brian received a BSEE from the

University of Maryland, College Park The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1856, UMD i ...

in December 1982, and an MSEE from

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

in June 1984. Hinman later sponsored an entrepreneurship program at

called the "Hinman CEOs".

Career

From 2006 to 2015, Hinman worked at Oak Ventures as a venture partner where he worked with Cleantech investments, such as algae company Aurora Algae, and solar technology companies eSolar and GreenVolts. Hinman has also been involved with public-private partnerships by buying and funding an underfunded fire station in Los Gatos. In 2012, Hinman co-founded Mimosa Networks, a gigabit wireless hardware company based in Santa Clara, CA. Hinman served as co-founder, CEO and president at Mimosa Networks. In November 2018, Mimosa merged with Airspan Networks, a leader in 5G mobile technologies.

Awards

Hinman received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Award in 2004 and was a national finalist in 2005. In 2011, the Rochester Institute of Technology awarded him an honorary doctorate of science.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hinman, Brian Living people American venture capitalists 1961 births Businesspeople from Bethesda, Maryland MIT School of Engineering alumni University of Maryland, College Park alumni