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Joseph Firmage (born October 26, 1970 in Salt Lake City, Utah) is an American Internet entrepreneur. He founded several business ventures prior to and during the dot-com boom and currently is involved with two closely linked organizations: ManyOne Networks, of which he is CEO, and the Digital Universe Foundation, of which he is a co-founder and member of the Board of Directors. ==Early business career: Serius, Novell, USWeb== Firmage attended the University of Utah, where his father was a law professor, on a physics scholarship but only stayed through his sophomore year. In 1989 he started his first company, Serius, which grew out of a Macintosh program he had written for his mother's greeting card business. Serius produced developer tools for object-oriented programming. The company received funding from several sources, including Novell, which ultimately bought Serius for $24 million in 1993. Its product then became the basis for AppWare, while Firmage became vice president of strategic planning for Novell's NetWare division.〔Cox, Ed. ''(A brief history of Microbrew )''.〕 Firmage left Novell in 1995 when the company decided to focus its business on networking products.〔Cox, John. "Novell's AppWare tools are reborn at start-up company". ''Network World'', 25 March 1996.〕 (Later, Firmage would explain the departure as a disagreement over Novell's strategy in selling its Unix licensing rights and a failure to compete with Microsoft in the network operating system market.〔Firmage, Joe. "(Perspective: An open-source letter )". ''CNET News.com'', 1 October 2003.〕) His brother, Edwin J. Firmage, started a new company, Network Multimedia, to buy the AppWare technology back from Novell.〔 The product was eventually renamed Microbrew, but the company disappeared after a few years.〔 Meanwhile, Firmage, together with two other former Novell executives, Toby Corey and Sheldon Laube and two other outside executives, Jim Heffernan and Ken Campbell, also founded USWeb during this period.〔Nerney, Chris. "(USWeb buys six of its affiliates )". ''NetworkWorld'', 21 April 1997.〕 Originally a Web design company, USWeb grew with a series of acquisitions into an Internet consulting firm, following a strategy of buying businesses with expertise in corporate intranets and extranets. USWeb stock became publicly traded in December 1997, as the company sought to achieve critical mass in an atmosphere Firmage acknowledged was an Internet bubble.〔Mark Gimein. "(Playing the Price )". ''The Industry Standard'', 1 May 1998.〕 With Firmage as CEO, USWeb continued its expansion and ultimately merged with a rival Web consulting firm, CKS Group. Firmage was originally announced as CEO of the merged company, but in November 1998 Robert Shaw took over as CEO while the merger was under way. Initially Firmage took the title of chief strategist, then left the company in January 1999,〔Gray, Douglas F. "(Founder of USWeb quits over UFO views )". ''InfoWorld'', 11 January 1999〕 with a generous severance package. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Joe Firmage」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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