Bill Nguyen (born 1971) is a Vietnamese-American technology entrepreneur.

Life

Nguyen grew up in

Houston Houston (; ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in Texas, the Southern United States#Major cities, most populous city in the Southern United States, the List of United States cities by population, fourth-most pop ...

, the son of Vietnamese immigrants. He attended

Strake Jesuit College Preparatory Strake Jesuit College Preparatory (properly referred to as Strake Jesuit or Jesuit but often informally called Strake by students and alumni) is a Jesuit, college-preparatory school for boys, grades 9–12, in the Chinatown area and in the Greate ...

, graduating in 1991, then attended

Houston Baptist University Houston Christian University (HCU), formerly Houston Baptist University, is a private Baptist university in Houston, Texas. It is affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas (Southern Baptist Convention). Its Cultural Arts Center h ...

. Nguyen headed business development and product management at the ForeFront Group, which was founded in 1992 and had their

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 investme ...

in 1995. He served as vice president of products of FreeLoader which was founded in 1995 and sold in 1996. Nguyen founded Onebox.com in 1999. It was acquired for $850 million in 1999 by Phone.com (later part of

Openwave Openwave (formerly software.com, phone.com, and Libris, Inc) is a division of Enea. It provides video traffic management and 5G mobile products. Two of Openwave's former products launched as private companies; Openwave Mobility and Openwave ...

). He sold his stake quickly and started SEVEN Networks, a wireless e-mail firm that claimed 1.4 billion accounts. Nguyen founded Seven Networks in May 2000 and served as its co-chief executive officer until April 2005. In 2002, Nguyen was named to the

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and editorially independent of the university. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "The" in ...

TR100 The Innovators Under 35 is a peer-reviewed annual award and listicle published by ''MIT Technology Review'' magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35. at ''Technology Review'' with lists of winners at technologyreview.com ...

as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35. Nguyen then co-founded La La Media Inc. in 2005 in

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was ...

. In 2006 ''

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely ...

'' and ''

Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fran ...

'' described the company as a mix of MySpace,

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a ...

Napster Napster was a peer-to-peer file sharing application. It originally launched on June 1, 1999, with an emphasis on digital audio file distribution. Audio songs shared on the service were typically encoded in the MP3 format. It was founded by Sh ...

and iTunes. The company bought and sold

compact disc The compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then released in Octo ...

s. Eventually, La La developed one of the first, free streaming music services. On December 5, 2009, Lala.com was acquired by

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...

for $80 million. Apple announced that lala.com service was shut down on May 31, 2010. He was on the

World Economic Forum The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental and lobbying organisation based in Cologny, canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German engineer and economist Klaus Schwab. The foundation, ...

's Young Global Leaders list in 2010. Nguyen was a co-founder of Color labs, Inc. in 2010 and served as its chief executive officer, but had been away from day-to-day operations since July 2012. Apple acquired Color labs for their engineering team and the Color service was closed in 2013.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nguyen, Bill 1971 births Living people Strake Jesuit College Preparatory alumni Businesspeople from Houston American Internet celebrities American technology company founders American people of Vietnamese descent

Life

Further reading

References