Bruce Leak is an American

inventor An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea, or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...

and

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

, and currently a co-founder at

Playground Global Playground Global, LLC is a venture capital firm established in 2015 and located in Palo Alto, CA, which focuses on early-stage deep tech investments. Background Playground Global is an early-stage venture capital firm that invests across next ...

. He was one of three co-founders of

WebTV MSN TV (formerly WebTV) was a web access product consisting of a thin client device that used a television for display (instead of using a computer monitor), and the online service that supported it. The original WebTV device design and service ...

and is credited with making several major advances in the

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

operating system. ''

Wired Wired may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * ''Wired'' (Jeff Beck album), 1976 * ''Wired'' (Hugh Cornwell album), 1993 * ''Wired'' (Mallory Knox album), 2017 * "Wired", a song by Prism from their album '' Beat Street'' * "Wired ...

'' magazine described him as an "Apple Hero," saying that he "kick-started the multimedia revolution, bringing quality video to the Mac a year before anything even remotely comparable hit Windows."

Background

Leak graduated from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

with bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering and computer science. During his Stanford years, he worked 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 ...

on the initial versions of

Word A word is a basic element of language that carries semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguist ...

and Multiplan ( Excel). He held senior management and engineering roles at

Rocket Science Games Rocket Science Games was a video game developer and publisher that created games for video game console, consoles and personal computers from 1993 to 1997. The company released ''Loadstar: The Legend of Tully Bodine'', ''Cadillacs and Dinosaurs: ...

and

General Magic General Magic was an American software and electronics company co-founded by Bill Atkinson, Andy Hertzfeld, and Marc Porat. Based in Mountain View, California, the company developed precursors to "USB, software modems, small touchscreens, to ...

Apple

He began his career 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 ...

, where he invented and brought to market

QuickTime QuickTime (or QuickTime Player) is an extensible multimedia architecture created by Apple, which supports playing, streaming, encoding, and transcoding a variety of digital media formats. The term ''QuickTime'' also refers to the QuickTime Pla ...

(1991) and 32-bit

QuickDraw QuickDraw was the 2D graphics library and associated application programming interface (API) which is a core part of classic Mac OS. It was initially written by Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld. QuickDraw still existed as part of the libraries ...

."Apple Heroes and Villains"
, ''Wired'', March 29, 2006 '

WebTV

He is one of the co-founders of

Networks, a company founded in 1995 that enabled households to access the Internet through their televisions. He also served as the company's chief operating officer and later president. WebTV Networks was purchased by Microsoft in 1997 and absorbed into the Microsoft Network. Leak became the President of Microsoft's WebTV Network subsidiary.

Carrier IQ

In 2005 Leak co-founded

Carrier IQ Carrier IQ was a privately owned mobile software company founded in 2005 in Sunnyvale, California. It provided diagnostic analysis of smartphones to the wireless industry via the installation of software on the user's phone, typically in a mann ...

, a company that provides embedded analytics to the wireless industry through embedding diagnostic software in the mobile phone. He served as CEO until his replacement by Mark Quinlivan in late 2006. Mr. Quinlivan left Carrier IQ in 2010. In 2011 Larry Lenhart was appointed CEO. In early 2016, Carrier IQ ceased operations and it was announced that AT&T had acquired software assets and staff from the company.

Playground Global

In early 2015 Leak co-founded

, alongside Andy Rubin, Matt Hershenson and Peter Barrett. Playground Global is a combination venture capital fund and tech incubator that provides resources, mentorship and funding to startups making hardware devices. As of late 2015, Playground Global had raised more than $300 million from investors including Google, Hewlett-Packard Co., electronics manufacturer Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Tencent Holdings Ltd., Redpoint Ventures, and Seagate Technology PLC.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Leak, Bruce Living people Apple Inc. employees Microsoft employees Year of birth missing (living people)