this is not meant to be a brag site, but people ask so in semi chronological order with a reverse, here are our stories. Most got to long for websites and is easier to copy for lectures and things
Rich Tong
Rich has spent 30 years riding technology waves from the PC to mobile to cloud to Asia and now AI.
At Microsoft, he was a key part of the PC revolution. He was the fourth product manager on Excel for Windows where he was the center of developing new product features, connecting with customers, developing the business and pricing plan with responsibility for global revenues and profits. He pioneered several innovative product (1-2-3 compatibility mode) and marketing initiatives (Working Models, Excel Seminars) that helped increase the products share from 5% to 25% in two year.
Ultimately, he became Vice President of Product Management and member of the Executive Staff for Windows NT for enterprises, SQL Server, Exchange and BackOffice server suite. During his tenure, his team pushed for and got key features for the products (integrated server installation, reduction in memory usage), marketing (integration with Compaq sales), and business (introduction of capacity pricing) all of which caused enterprise sales from $49M to $1.2B in 18 months and ultimately to $12.5B. He co-authored the best-selling Marketing Playbook based on these experiences to highlight the important of product strategy, customer understanding and business pricing and partnerships. At that time, there were fewer than 50 Executive Staff members managing over 100,000 full time equivalent employees.
In 2000, Rich joined five senior Microsoft executives and five senior AT&T Wireless to usher in the mobile, cloud and Asia technology revolutions. He co-founded Ignition Partners with initial backing from QUALCOMM, SoftBank, Motorola and HP/Compaq to mentor and invest in wireless internet companies. And, in 2005, co-founded Qiming Ventures Capital to help fuel the explosive growth in Asia. Today these firms have over $11B under management and were early investors in major companies such as DocuSign (NSQ:DOCU) and Xiaomi (1810.HK). He led investments in a variety of companies acquired by Apple, TenCent, HP, Cisco and others where he focused on product, customer and business strategy.
In 2015, Rich and several Ignition co-founders focus on deep AI technology bets and created surround.io. In 24 months, they received 23 patents in vision, distributed camera systems and automotive applications. As a result, the company was merged into Xevo, Inc, the largest software-only Tier-1 automotive supplier in the world with customers such as Toyota, Lexus, Honda, GM and Suburu. And that company was sold in 2019 to Lear Corporation, a $14B Tier-1 automotive supplier give them software expertise as cars become “computers on wheels”.
By 2021, he worked with the co-founder and key technologists at Xevo to create a TNE.ai, taking their experience in Automotive to the broader Enterprise AI market based on the latest Large Language Model innovations with the same focus on core technology but marrying a partnership strategy in vertical markets.
Rich started his career in research and development. He was Member of Technical Staff at Bell Telephone Laboratories He earned his MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford and held a dual positions as a PhD Candidate at Stanford and as a Research Fellow at LSI Logic Corporation’s Palo Alto Laboratories. Prior to that, he was a GM Scholar at Princeton University where earned a BS EECS summa cum laude Phi Beta Kappa.
He holds 27 patents in computer vision, machine learning and robotics and has lectured on business, product design and marketing at Stanford, Northwestern University, University of Washington and UC Berkeley.
He was fortunate to grow up in Holmdel NJ (of Severance fame) where Thanksgiving to the generosity of his father, learned to program in high school on a PDP-8e with 4K memory and at Bell Tekephone Laboratories where he was (a very nerdy) president of one of the first computer clubs for high school students in the US. He graduated from Holmdel High School as Salutatarian.
