Larry Augustin (born October 10, 1962) is a former VP at Amazon Web Services. He formerly was the

chairman The chair, also chairman, chairwoman, or chairperson, is the presiding officer of an organized group such as a board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office, who is typically elected or appointed by members of the gro ...

of the board of directors of SugarCRM. He is a former venture capitalist and the founder of VA Software (now

Geeknet Geeknet, Inc. is an American company that is a subsidiary of GameStop based in Fairfax County, Virginia. The company was formerly known as VA Research, VA Linux Systems, VA Software, and SourceForge, Inc. History VA Research VA Research was foun ...

). During the height of the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (or dot-com boom) was a stock market bubble that ballooned during the late-1990s and peaked on Friday, March 10, 2000. This period of market growth coincided with the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web and the Interne ...

, Augustin was a

billionaire A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least 1,000,000,000, one billion units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. It is a sub-category of the concept of the ultr ...

on paper at the age of 38. Augustin is featured in the 2001 documentary film '' Revolution OS''.

Early life and education

Augustin grew up in a suburb of

Dayton Dayton () is a city in Montgomery County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of cities in Ohio, sixth-most populous city in Ohio, with a population of 137,644 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. The Dayton metro ...

Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...

, though he spent some of his early life on a family farm in

New Hampshire New Hampshire ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec t ...

. After receiving a B.S. in electrical engineering from the

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac (known simply as Notre Dame; ; ND) is a Private university, private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, United States. Founded in 1842 by members of the Congregation of Holy Cross, a Cathol ...

, Augustin received a fellowship from

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...

to pursue a master's degree in electrical engineering 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 ...

. He went to work for Bell Labs for a year and then returned to Stanford to pursue a PhD.

Career

In 1993, Augustin founded VA Research (later VA Linux and

), while a Ph.D. student at Stanford. Augustin was a Stanford colleague of

Jerry Yang Jerry Chih-Yuan Yang (; born Yang Chih-Yuan; November 6, 1968) is a Taiwanese-born American billionaire computer programmer, internet entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. He is the co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo! Inc. and founding partne ...

and

David Filo David Robert Filo (born April 20, 1966) is an American billionaire businessman and the co-founder of Yahoo! with classmate Jerry Yang. His Filo Server Program, written in the C programming language, was the server-side software used to dynamica ...

, the founders of

Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

. Filo and Yang introduced Augustin to

Sequoia Capital Sequoia Capital Operations, LLC is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California, specializing in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. the firm had appro ...

, which provided Augustin with

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 ...

. In November 1999, he launched

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service founded by Geoffrey B. Jeffery, Tim Perdue, and Drew Streib in November 1999. SourceForge provides a centralized software discovery platform, including an online platform for managing and hosting open-source soft ...

, a collaborative development environment or "

forge A forge is a type of hearth used for heating metals, or the workplace (smithy) where such a hearth is located. The forge is used by the smith to heat a piece of metal to a temperature at which it becomes easier to shape by forging, or to the ...

". On December 9, 1999, during the

, VA Linux became a

public company A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of share capital, stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter (finance), over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) co ...

via an

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 ...

and Augustin, then 38-years old, became a

on paper. In August 2002, Augustin left VA Linux and from September 2002 to December 2004, he was a partner at Azure Capital Partners, where he helped lead Azure's investments in

Zend Technologies Zend, formerly Zend Technologies, is a Minneapolis, Minnesota-based software company. The company's products, which include Zend Studio, assist software developers with developing, deploying, and managing PHP-based web applications. The company w ...

and Medsphere. In 2005, Augustin joined the

board of directors A board of directors is a governing body that supervises the activities of a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government agency. The powers, duties, and responsibilities of a board of directors are determined by government regulatio ...

of SugarCRM and in May 2009, Augustin was appointed as the

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

. Augustin was the CEO of SugarCRM until February 2019 when Craig Charlton was appointed the role, with. Augustin remaining the chairman of the board of directors. In July 2019, Augustin became a VP at

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

Web Services. He left Amazon in 2021.

Personal life

Augustin works out in a gym every day after work. He is married and has a daughter who was born in 1997.

References

External links

* *

Interviews

Audio interview
on

FLOSS Weekly Leo Laporte (; born November 29, 1956) is the former host of '' The Tech Guy'' weekly radio show and founder of TWiT.tv, an Internet podcast network focusing on technology. He is also a former TechTV technology host (1998–2008) and a technology ...

Interview
on

Slashdot ''Slashdot'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''/.'') is a social news website that originally billed itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters". It features news stories on science, technology, and politics that are submitted and evaluated by site ...

Interview
on

Linux Journal ''Linux Journal'' (''LJ'') is an American monthly technology magazine originally published by Specialized System Consultants, Inc. (SSC) in Seattle, Washington since 1994. In December 2006 the publisher changed to Belltown Media, Inc. in Hous ...

Interview
on Small Business Trends {{DEFAULTSORT:Augustin, Larry American venture capitalists Living people Geeknet Stanford University School of Engineering alumni 1962 births American company founders American technology chief executives Open source advocates Notre Dame College of Engineering alumni People from New Hampshire