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Skyworks Solutions

Skyworks Solutions – A Wireless Semiconductor Solutions Specialist.

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Skyworks Solutions is an American company driving the wireless communication revolution. A member of the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 market indices, is a multinational corporation with engineering, operations, marketing, sales, and support facilities spread across Europe, North America, and Asia. It is the biggest company in the world that specializes in wireless semiconductor solutions.

About The Company

Skyworks Solutions has its main office in California. It produces semiconductors for usage in radio frequency (RF) and cellular communications networks. Power amplifiers, front-end modules, and RF solutions for mobile devices and wireless network infrastructure are some of the company’s products.

Skyworks Solutions
Image Source: finbold.com

In a variety of new and previously unforeseen applications in aviation, automobiles, cellular infrastructure, broadband, connected home, healthcare, industrial, military, smartphone, tablet, and wearable markets, the company’s highly innovative analog semiconductors are tying together individuals, locations, and things. It provides optimized solutions for mobile network applications, ranging from fundamental parts and interconnected RF modules to full system platforms.

History

On June 26, 2002, Alpha Industries and Conexant’s wireless communications segment merged, resulting in the creation of a new company named Skyworks Solutions. It is based in Irvine, California, and has production operations there as well as in Woburn, Mexicali, and Newbury Park, California.

The company has design centers in Irvine, Santa Rosa, Newbury Park, Woburn, Greensboro, Cedar Rapids, and Ottawa, among other cities. The corporation has design, engineering, production, marketing, sales, and service facilities spread across Europe, Asia, and North America. The setting for the “Such Great Heights” music video by The Postal Service is Skyworks’s chip production facility in Newbury Park.

In 2015, Skyworks Solutions and PMC-Sierra entered a binding agreement under which Skyworks Solutions was supposed to acquire the company. However, after Microsemi outbid Skyworks Solutions, the contract was terminated.

In 2021, Skyworks Solutions and Silicon Labs reached a binding deal for Skyworks Solutions to pay $2.75 billion for Silicon Labs’ Infra & Automotive division. In order to improve its international Research and Innovation activities, its Cellular System Business Unit established its Indian subsidiary in 2003.

In just two years, the design centers in India (Hyderabad and Noida) have made a significant impact on our present and future products by developing, designing, and testing systems and software solutions for wireless handset devices. In 2021, Skyworks Solutions generated a revenue of over 5.11$ billion.

Products

A few of the products offered by this company are modulators, mixers, optocouplers, phase shifters, optoisolators, PLLs/VCOs/synthesizers power combiners/dividers, power regulation gadgets, receivers, switches, and technical ceramics. The company also offers amplifiers, circulators, attenuators, front-end modules, demodulators, diodes, detectors, directional couplers, hybrids, and infrastructure RF subsystems.

Founder and CEO – Liam Griffin

Liam K. Griffin is the founder, president, chairman, and CEO of Skyworks Solutions. He had held the positions of CEO, Director, and President since May 2016 before being appointed as the chairman of the board in 2021. He oversaw all of Skyworks Solutions’ business segments while serving as executive VP and corporate general manager from 2012 to 2014.

He served as the vice president of global sales at Vectron International, before joining Skyworks Solutions. He has completed his bachelor’s from the University of Massachusetts and also holds an MBA degree from Boston University.

He presently sits on the executive committee of the CEO Leadership Alliance Orange County as well as the board of National Instruments, a provider of software-defined systems for automated measurement and testing systems. Previously, Mr. Griffin was a member of Vicor Corps board.

Sprinklr

Ragy Thomas started coding in his spare time to build a famous software company.

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Ragy Thomas, an Indian-born American entrepreneur founded Sprinklr, a software company in 2009. The company’s headquarters is based in New York City and has more than 2,400 employees. Earlier in 2021, Sprinklr got listed on the New York Stock Exchange and started trading as a public company. Sprinklr specializes in SaaS customer management experience (CME) platform and combines different applications for social media marketing and monitoring, content management, collaboration, etc. Many multinational conglomerates like Nike, Cisco, Microsoft have signed up over time for the services of Sprinklr.

About Sprinklr

Ragy founded Sprinklr from his spare bedroom in 2009 and officially launched the company in 2010. He launched the company after successfully landing his first customer but in no time many big companies signed up for Sprinklr’s platform. The idea behind Sprinklr’s platform for managing customer experience on the modern channel is something the companies will look up to during the 21st century. Thus, it became very popular in a little time. Over the years, Ragy has brought experienced executives onboard from companies like BMC, Salesforce, Microsoft, Proctor & Gamble, etc. Sprinklr currently has offices in 25 countries and two other headquarters in London and Singapore respectively.

Sprinklr
Image source: www.battery.com

Early Days

Before Ragy founded Sprinklr, he had years of experience in the IT sector. When he moved to America, Ragy started working in IT consulting for AT&T and Bell Labs. But soon there was the dot-com bubble burst and he decided to spin out the company’s email marketing unit that he was working for. The new business (after spin-off) acquired Bigfoot Interactive and took its brand name which was later acquired by Alliance Data System in 2005. During this time he completed his MBA in a part-time program from New York University.

Eventually, Ragy witnessed the landscape of business changing as online marketing shifted to social media from emails. So, in his spare time, he started to code social media publishing tools and finally was able to build a dashboard for all social platforms. This marked his entrepreneurial journey and he named the company Sprinklr. During the first couple of years, Ragy self-funded the business and after he was able to land some big clients like Cisco and Dell, his brand gained popularity.

Success

In 2012, Sprinklr received its first funding from external sources, and eventually, the numbers kept rising. After a couple of years, Sprinklr raised $40 million in a funding round after which the company’s valuation became $500 million. It also acquired the Dachis Group to stretch the abilities of the Sprinklr platform. In 2014, Sprinklr acquired two more companies, namely, TBG Digital and a brand advocacy company called Branderati. Next year, the company raised another $46 million in Series E funding, and by this time the company valuation crossed $1 billion. It also launched a brand new product called Experience Cloud platform where companies can manage interaction for 23 different social media and channels. Sprinklr acquired two more companies, NewBrand and Booshaka.

In 2016, the company raised $105 million in a funding round leading its valuation to $1.8 billion. The company decided to launch new products for its Experience Cloud platform and thus expanded from social media management to customer experience management. In 2018, the company released another new product called Sprinklr Intuition (an AI-based solution) for the automatic collection and analysis of data from social media platforms. Next year, it released another AI-based product called Product Insights which can segregate various customer comments and reviews related to design, features, etc. In 2020, another funding led the company’s valuation increase to $2.7 billion.

Ragy Thomas – Founder and CEO of Sprinklr

Ragy Thomas was born and raised in India but his parents moved to Nigeria due to work purposes when he was very young. Later, he again shifted to India and attended Pondicherry Engineering College, and started working at TCS. Later, he moved to New Jersey and started working in the IT consulting sector. Currently, Ragy is the CEO of his company Sprinklr and is also present in the Board of Directors.

Dormakaba

Dormakaba – One of the Biggest Global Access Control and Security Solutions Company.

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Dormakaba Holding AG started as two separate companies and have separate histories before 2015. Kaba and former Dorma merged in 2015 to form Dormakaba, a global security group offering services like identification, safe locks and lodging products.

Dormakaba is a global leader in the field of access security and has over 150 years of experience. The company is providing its services to almost every industry, including healthcare, hotel, education, shops, entertainment facilities, etc. Dormakaba headquarters is based in Rümlang, Switzerland, and over 15000 people are working for it. Dormakaba work in five different segments, i.e., Access Solutions AMER (North and South America), Access Solutions APAC (Asia Pacific), Access Solutions DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland),  Access Solutions EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa), Key and Wall Solutions.

The Growth History of Dormakaba

Dormakaba
Image source: www.mark-info.co.uk

Kaba started as a locksmith shop, which also worked as a cash register factory. Franz Bauer founded Kaba in Zurich in 1862, but in 1915, Leo Bodmer bought and renamed the company to Bauer AG. The first patent for the company after the acquisition was of the first cylinder lock made by inventor Fritz Schori. The lock was named after the founder of Kaba, i.e., ‘Kassenbauer’ (in German).

In the coming years, the company expanded from Zurich to the whole of Europe and listed on the Zurich stock exchange along with a name change to Kaba Holding AG in 1995. In 2001, the company started to expand overseas through some major acquisitions, Unican Security Systems of North America being one of them. The company also acquired a China-based company named  Wah Yuet Group, a US-based company Computerized Security Systems and a Dutch company  H. Cillekens Zn. B.V. in 2006. At the same time, Kaba also partnered with Minda Group of India.

The Growth Story of Dormakaba

On the other hand, Wilhelm Dörken and Rudolf Mankel founded Dorma as Dörken & Mankel KG in Ennepetal, Germany, in the year 1908. The company worked in the field of door technology. For the 50 years of its inception, the company was constantly working towards incorporating technology into the door systems, and in 1962, it built its first automatic door.

In the next fifteen years, the company also started to work on glass fittings. The company also started to expand and opened its first international office in Singapore in 1978. In the next ten years, Dorma brought Safety solutions and emergency exit control systems to its product range. In 1999, Dorma acquired a comapny named Groom and introduced mobile partition walls in 2002. In 2013, the company recorded 1 billion Euros in annual turnover.

The Merger

The two companies, Dorma and Kaba, both the leaders in their respective fields, decided to merge their operations to expand even more. The two companies came together on 30 April 2015 for the planning and sealed the deal in September of the same year.

The Product Range

Today, Dormakaba is among the top three security companies and is offering its services worldwide. Since the company is a result of a big merger, the company provides its services under multiple brand names, including Keyscan, Best, Dorma, Dorma, Dormakaba, lIco, Kaba, Kilargo, Legic, etc. Also, the areas of operation for the company includes door hardware, electronic access and data, entrance systems, mechanical key systems, safe locks, lodging systems, interior glass systems, movable walls, etc.

The CEO at Dormakaba

Sabrina Soussan is the CEO of Dormakaba. She is a French and German national. Soussan has a Master’s Degree in Mechanical and Aeronautical engineering from the E.N.S.M.A Aeronautical and Mechanical Engineering School, Poitiers (FR) and an MBA Degree from the Poitiers and Dublin University.

Soussan was appointed as the CEO of Dormakaba in January 2021. Before that, she served as the co-CEO at Siemens Mobility and worked at the company for eleven years in different positions. She also worked at companies like Renault for a few years. Soussan is also a member of the board of directors at ITT Inc. and Schaeffler.

CACI International

CACI International Inc. – One Stop Destination for IT and Simulations Software Services.

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CACI International Inc. is an American information technology company that mainly works for the US federal government as 95% of the company contracts are from the federal government. The company headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia. Though it mainly works to provide IT services to the intelligence and the defense department of the government, it operates in different countries to offer custom software and IT services to its customers overseas.

The variety of services offered by CACI International Inc. includes manufacturing of technology systems, custom software development, integration and operations, simulation, and development of the proprietary database as well as software products.

The Back Story CACI International

Herb Karr and Harry Markowitz left their well-paying job at RAND Corporation to establish CACI in 1962. The company was founded on July 17 of the same year, and the main focus of the company was to sell the SIMSCRIPT simulation programming language. SIMSCRIPT is the first simulation programming language, which the two founders had developed at RAND Corporation.

CACI International
Image Source: politico.com

The optimized planning of starting the company brought $34,000 in revenue to the founders in its first year of operations. In 1963, the company bagged a contract from the government to develop an inventory control simulation for the Navy’s Ships Parts Control Center in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. In the first five years, the company released a compiler to translate the SIMSCRIPT programs named Simscript 1.5 and also started to work on information processing systems, QUICK QWERY being their first such proprietary product.

The Growth and Expansion

CACI started with the name California Analysis Center, Inc. and was later changed to Consolidated Analysis Center, Incorporated in 1967. The next year, just in six years of its inception, CACI went public and topped the revenues by $1 million.

For the ten years of its beginning, CACI was offering its services to various departments of the state government like from management of vehicle registration to licensing and wheeled-vehicle revenue support and from false emergency alarm billing systems to housing registration systems. And in 1974, the company put its first step forward to expand in other countries as well. CACI established its first headquarter in Europe, i.e., in The Hague. The other European offices were set up in the major cities in Europe, like London, Dublin, Milan, and Bermuda.  This expansion brought the company $1 million of revenues within three years. By the end of the decade, CACI had won contracts from the US Defence and the Department of Justice. 

In the 80s, CACI started to expand its operations and entered into the field of IT. During these years, it made revenues worth $100 million annually. In 1988, CACI developed and marketed optical imaging systems for records management as its proprietary product.

CACI International
Image Source: wikimedia.org

The beginning of the 90s made CACI experiment with the emerging networking technology. During the same time, the company made some of the major acquisitions, including American Legal Systems Corp., some shares of the government-owned SofTech, Pinpoint Analysis Ltd. and Miracle Products Ltd., etc. These years brought the company around $200 to $250 million annual revenues. The expansion into the IT sector made CACI start projects in partnership with names like AT&T, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, and Unisys, etc. By this time, the company had started to deal in computer hardware, software, and database products.

Beginning with the year 2000, CACI made some major investments and acquisitions. In 2002, it also moved from the NASDAQ to the Big Board on the New York Stock Exchange. Till now, the company had opened around 90 offices in the US and Europe. In 2004, the revenues of the company touched the $1 billion mark, and it became a Unicorn company. The average annual revenue for the company has been around $5.7 billion for the past few years, and approximately 23,000 employees are working for the company around the world. The company has been constant in the Fortune 1000 Largest Companies list for many years.

The CEO: John Mengucci

John Mengucci has been serving CACI as the President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) since July 2019. He is known for his leadership skills as he has been working at some prominent positions at various big-name companies. Mengucci has a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Science from Clarkson University, which he completed in 1984. After he completed the bachelor’s degree, he started to work as a software engineer at Babcock & Wilcox in 1984 and then, joined Syracuse University in 1992 to pursue an MBA degree.

In June 2006, Mengucci became the president of the IS&GS-Defense department at Lockheed Martin, and in 2010, he was appointed as the president of the Global Solutions-Civil department of the same company. He then left the company to join CACI in 2012.

Glassdoor

Glassdoor: The Story Behind the Biggest Online Review Portal for Job Seekers

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Years ago, people were practicing the traditional approach to finding jobs, i.e., through the newspaper classified section, local ads, brokers, or a reference from a friend or relative. But as the internet evolved with time, people started using online job portals, which became the most convenient method for all sorts of job seekers. Today millions of users, both employers and job seekers, can easily connect through such portals. In the same league, when one is looking for a job and gets an offer, they now can look for the company reviews on similar review-based websites, and easily make their mind on taking or not taking the offer. One such leading review-based online portal is Glassdoor.

Glassdoor is a review-based website that lets its users anonymously submit their reviews about a company, their experience, satisfaction with the company, salary, other workplace-related data, etc. This information is publicly available to job seekers, who want to know about the work environment of a certain company. The website also includes the feature to post or search for a job.

The Founders of Glassdoor

The co-founders of Glassdoor include Tim Besse, Robert Hohman, and Rich Barton. Both Robert Hohman and Rich Barton were working for Microsoft. Barton founded Expedia (a Microsoft spun-off company) in 1996, where Hohman was one of the team members. Later, after the spin-off, Barton became the chairman and Hohman the CEO of Expedia.

Glassdoor Founders
Glassdoor Founders: Robert Hohman, Tim Besse, and Rich Barton
Image Source: geekwire.com

On the other hand, Tim Besse met his future partners Hohman and Barton at Expedia only. He joined the company as his first job immediately after graduating from the Case Western Reserve University. Besse worked as the director of the Product Management and Online Marketing for the Asia Pacific division at Expedia.

The Story Behind

Rich Barton had been in the online business industry from before and had co-founded companies like Expedia and Zillow. He had a mind that would ask questions and try to answer them, even if he had to opt for an unconventional path. Going off track, with Expedia, he was providing airline ticket prices to the public and, with Zillow, he was revealing the exact real estate prices for the people. With Glassdoor too, he took an unconventional step.

During a brainstorming session for a new business idea in 2007, Barton and Hohman remembered an incident when Barton had left some employee survey data on the printer. This survey had information about employee satisfaction, their salaries, and reviews of their workplace. Though Barton’s assistant had grabbed that file safely, the two discussed the bad and the good aspects of that information going public. It was the trigger point for their new business idea. The two thought that even if that data had got revealed, it would have not caused any harm to anyone. In fact, if there was such a public platform, where people could submit such reviews of their companies, it would have been helpful for the job seekers to make better career choices.

The Working of Glassdoor

Tim Besse was impressed by the idea and left Expedia to join Hohman and Barton for their new business.  Finally, in June 2008, with an investment of around $10 million, they founded Glassdoor. The concept behind the platform was the anonymous rating of companies by the people who have worked with them. People now had a platform, where they could put their reviews on their experience with a company, how much they got paid, and how satisfied they were while working in it. Glassdoor also enabled the users to post any company-related media on the platform, to make their reviews more authentic.

The Platform uses smart technology and a team of people to filter the original reviews from original people so that the reviews are always trustworthy. With time, the platform started posting their rating for the companies, by averaging the reviews, salaries of employees, rating for the management, culture, etc. Later, based on the rating, Glassdoor started offering the ‘Best Places to Work Awards’ to the top listed companies.

The Journey of the Company in the Past Decade

In 2010, the company added a new feature to the website, i.e. Enhanced Employer Profiles. This new feature allows the users to add content other than reviews on the website. This feature is paid and offers the users to add content like social media links, interview questions, classified, etc. to their account. This paid content became useful for the people who wanted to prepare for a certain company interview. Glassdoor also provided features to submit a job opening for companies.

From 2012 to 2015, the company had raised around $160 million through venture capital. By 2015, Glassdoor had registered over 20 million users, and in the following two years, there were 41 million unique users at the platform. Glassdoor became a unicorn company within ten years of its founding. More than one-third of the biggest companies in the world have partnered with Glassdoor as its corporate clients. It has become the most trustworthy platform for job seekers. Glassdoor has been a winner of the Red Herring North America Award for Social Media Innovation 2013.

In June 2018, Recruit Holdings acquired Glassdoor for $1.2 billion in cash. Currently, Christian Sutherland-Wong is working as the CEO of Glassdoor.

Eventbrite

Eventbrite, manage events in a better way

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What was the last time when you heard about an international event management company? Big companies may hire employees separately for this purpose, but most of the independent organizations cannot afford that. We, especially in our college life come through the term “event management” very often. Event management is considered as an appreciable skill. Especially in a metropolitan city, where numerous events take place every day, there is a sheer need for event managers. But, to organize an event, promotions are needed as well.

Eventbrite, an US-based event management company meets all the requirements needed to organize an event. The company was founded in 2006 with the motive to help people surf events around the city. The website also provided the feature of creating events, promoting them along with online ticketing for the events. The founders of Eventbrite are Renaud Visage, Julia Hartz and Kevin Hartz.

Renaud Visage

Visage is a Cornell University graduate who acquired a degree in Engineering. Visage joined Geomatrix as a Project Engineer after a couple of years since his graduation. In 2000, Visage became the Director of Engineering for Zing Networks and left the company after a year.

He became a Venture Partner at Index Ventures after which he became a very prominent Investor. He invested in many companies which include Snips, Mobius Motors, Hokodo, Engineer.ai etc. He is also a Board Partner of Point Nine Capital. Even after Visage co-founded Eventbrite in January 2006, he still serves as an Investor. He is also a mentor at StartupBootcamp.

Julia Hartz

Julia went to Pepperdine University and acquired a Bachelor’s degree in Telecommunication. After graduation, Julia joined MTV as a Development Executive followed by contributing to FX Networks. She left FX Networks in 2005 and co-founded Eventbrite next year. She is the current CEO of the company and also a member of the Board of Directors.

Hartz is a very significant figure in the women entrepreneurial world. She has been featured in the Fortune magazine as one of the most powerful women entrepreneurs. Julia is also an investor and she was featured in the Forbes.

Kevin Hartz

Brought up in California, Kevin holds a Bachelor’s degree in Arts from Stanford University and a Master’s degree from University College, Oxford. Kevin started his career as a Product Manager in Silicon Graphics. Kevin co-founded a start-up, ConnectGroup which was later acquired by LodgeNet. Before co-founding Eventbrite, Kevin along with Alan Braverman founded Xoom.

The crisis

The three founders chose the wrong time to launch Eventbrite. During the 2000s, an aura of the economic crisis was spread around the globe. None of the venture capitalists wanted to invest in any new start-ups creating a really difficult situation for Eventbrite. But, luckily the three of them were well-experienced. Visage knew how to be more strategic and play tactically without enough funding.
Eventbrite started emphasizing more on SEO and reach out to people through unique contents. The marketing strategies of Eventbrite played the ace and they were finally able to conduct Series A funding at the end of 2009.

Strategies

In the beginning, Eventbrite launched a 100% free business model which lured a good number of customers. Eventbrite proposed this model for the so that the organizers can test the managing system of Eventbrite and then get start paying for it. After Eventbrite started making progress, many organizers shifted from free to paid model to have better access and services.
In 2008, the company launched its application which solely served the purpose of surfing events. With time, more people signed up and the demand rose drastically. This led Eventbrite to launch the feature of online ticketing and earn through it.

The Success

Once Eventbrite started landing investors, the list expanded day by day. Eventbrite closed their Series E funding by raising $50 million from Tiger Capital in 2011. Another $60 million was raised by the company from the same investor in 2013. Some of the major investors of Eventbrite include Sequoia Capital, Tiger Capital etc. In 2017, the company raised $134 million from Series G funding. The next year, Eventbrite filed for its first IPO worth $200 million. According to 2018, the company’s annual revenue sums up to $291.6 million. Eventbrite made some significant acquisitions including Nvite, Ticketfly, Picatic and Pandora.

Today, apart from managing events on the land of the US, it has offices in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Argentina, Netherlands, Brazil and Australia.