Brad Silverberg is an American computer scientist and businessman, most noted for his work at

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

in 1990–1999 as Senior VP and product manager for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated as IE or MSIE) is a deprecation, retired series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were u ...

, and

Office An office is a space where the employees of an organization perform Business administration, administrative Work (human activity), work in order to support and realize the various goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a po ...

. He was named ''

PC Magazine ''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and continues . Overview ''PC Mag ...

''s Person of the Year in 1995 for his leadership of

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft and the first of its Windows 9x family of operating systems, released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 merged ...

Early career

Silverberg earned a BS degree ''

magna cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sout ...

'' in computer science from

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

, and an MS in computer science from

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

. His first work experience was research at

SRI International SRI International (SRI) is a nonprofit organization, nonprofit scientific research, scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California, United States. It was established in 1946 by trustees of Stanford Univer ...

, one of the four first

ARPANET The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first computer networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the tec ...

nodes. Also early in his career Silverberg worked in the early 1980s at

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Co ...

on the failed

Lisa Lisa or LISA may refer to: People People with the mononym * Lisa (Japanese musician, born 1974), stylized "LISA" * Lisa, stagename of Japanese singer Lisa Komine (born 1978) * Lisa (South Korean singer) (born 1980) * Lisa (Japanese musician, b ...

project. Later Silverberg was hired as the first employee at Analytica, a

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

startup. After 1985, he was VP of Engineering at

Borland Borland Software Corporation was a computing technology company founded in 1983 by Niels Jensen, Ole Henriksen, Mogens Glad, and Philippe Kahn. Its main business was developing and selling software development and software deployment products. B ...

after their acquisition of Analytica.

Career at Microsoft

In 1990, Silverberg left Borland to lead the personal systems division at Microsoft. A number of people left Borland to follow him at Microsoft in the following years, leading to a number of failed lawsuits from Borland. At the start of his tenure, the personal systems division was already a prime moneymaker with

, at that time sold only through OEMs. After shipping Windows 95, he turned his full-time focus onto the Internet efforts at Microsoft, which led to the creation of the Internet Platform and Tools Division 1996, which he led. In 1997, Silverberg was given responsibilities for Office but his principal interest remained with the Internet. He took a

sabbatical A sabbatical (from the Hebrew: (i.e., Sabbath); in Latin ; Greek: ) is a rest or break from work; "an extended period of time intentionally spent on something that’s not your routine job." The concept of the sabbatical is based on the Bi ...

that summer to reflect on where the Internet was going at Microsoft. He returned as a part-time consultant for new president and later CEO,

Steve Ballmer Steven Anthony Ballmer (; March 24, 1956) is an American businessman and investor who served as chief executive officer of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. He is the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He i ...

. On 29 October 1999, he left Microsoft.

After Microsoft

In March 2000, he led a group of former Microsoft executives to found Ignition Partners, a

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

firm. Silverberg worked as a partner of the firm. In 2013, he co-founded Fuel Capital, a seed stage venture capital firm. Silverberg retired in 2020.

References

External links

Ignition: Brad Silverberg biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Silverberg, Brad Microsoft employees Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Brown University alumni University of Toronto alumni