James Billmaier (born May 10, 1955) is an American technology businessman, inventor, and

author In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work that has been published, whether that work exists in written, graphic, visual, or recorded form. The act of creating such a work is referred to as authorship. Therefore, a sculpt ...

. He is currently the founder of FairwayBikes, Inc. Prior to Fairway Bikes Billmaier co-founded and was CEO of TurboPatent Corporation.

Early life and education

James A. Billmaier graduated from

Santa Clara University Santa Clara University is a private university, private Jesuit university in Santa Clara, California, United States. Established in 1851, Santa Clara University is the oldest operating institution of higher learning in California. The university' ...

in 1977.

Career

Billmaier was responsible for

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

workstation products and strategies at

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until ...

. He then became vice president of software marketing and business development at

MIPS Technologies MIPS Tech LLC, formerly MIPS Computer Systems, Inc. and MIPS Technologies, Inc., is an American Fabless semiconductor company, fabless semiconductor design company that is most widely known for developing the MIPS architecture and a series of Re ...

. From February 1992 through 1995, he was vice president and general manager of the networking software division at

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, part of the San Francisco Bay Area. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the population was 82,376 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Mountain V ...

. In July 1995, he became chief executive officer at

Asymetrix SumTotal Systems, Inc. is a software company based in Gainesville, Florida, that provides human resource management software and services to private and public sector organizations. The company uses multiple cloud-based channels, including soft ...

, which was founded by

Paul Allen Paul Gardner Allen (January 21, 1953 – October 15, 2018) was an American businessman, computer programmer, and investor. He co-founded Microsoft, Microsoft Corporation with his childhood friend Bill Gates in 1975, which was followed by the ...

. Based in

Bellevue, Washington Bellevue ( ) is a city in the Eastside (King County, Washington), Eastside region of King County, Washington, United States, located across Lake Washington from Seattle. It is the third-largest city in the Seattle metropolitan area, and the f ...

, Billmaier lead the company to an IPO in June 1998. The company changed its name to Click2Learn in 1999. Billmaier became the founding CEO of Digeo in 1999 where he led the acquisition of the Moxi product line in 2002. Billmaier and his team won back-to-back Emmy Awards for Technical Achievement in 2004 and 2005. Billmaier left Digeo in April 2005. In August 2005, Billmaier became CEO of the music service Melodeo. It was acquired by

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

in June 2010. Billmaier is a founding partner of Charge Northwest, an

electric vehicle An electric vehicle (EV) is a motor vehicle whose propulsion is powered fully or mostly by electricity. EVs encompass a wide range of transportation modes, including road vehicle, road and rail vehicles, electric boats and Submersible, submer ...

infrastructure advisory and software integration company. In October 2010, he published ''JOLT!: The Impending Dominance of the Electric Car and Why America Must Take Charge''. Billmaier was an executive producer of the Academy Award nominated documentary, ''Chasing Ice.'' Billmaier is the inventor of more than 100 granted or filed patents.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Billmaier, James Living people Santa Clara University alumni 1955 births