Demo's biggest stars of all time

Best of the best

The Demo conference has been the launching pad for 1,500 innovations over its 13-year history, and some of the industry's brightest lights have shined at the show. In a send-off for Demo's longtime executive producer Chris Shipley, many of them are back this week to receive Lifetime Achievement Awards. Let's meet the best of the best.

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Colin Angle
Chairman of the Board, CEO & Co-Founder, iRobot
DEMO Debut: iRobot, 2000

Angle's leadership has transformed the MIT spin-off into a $307 million business and a global leader of practical robots. More than 3 million iRobot Roomba vacuum-cleaning robots have been sold around the globe. More than 2,000 iRobot PackBot tactical mobile robots have been delivered to military and civil defense forces worldwide, performing thousands of dangerous missions while keeping personnel out of harm's way. In iRobot's early days, Angle and his team designed the behavior-controlled rovers for NASA that led to the Sojourner exploring Mars in 1997. Angle's team won the NASA Group Achievement Award for its accomplishments, and his name is inscribed inside the case of Spirit, the Mars exploration rover on display at NASA.

Shai Agassi
Founder & CEO, Better Place
DEMO Debut: TopTier, 1997

Agassi founded Better Place, an electric vehicle services provider. He works with government leaders, auto manufacturers, energy companies and others to make his vision - zero-emission vehicles powered by electricity from renewable sources - a reality in countries around the globe. Agassi officially launched the company in 2007. In 2008, Israel became the first country - and The Renault-Nissan Alliance the first carmaker - to embrace the Better Place model of building open network infrastructure to enable mass adoption of electric vehicles and delivering transportation as a sustainable service. Denmark, Australia, California, Hawaii, and Ontario have followed suit. Today, Agassi and Better Place are in discussions with many countries, carmakers and other potential partners around the globe.

Marc Benioff
Founder & Chairman, Salesforce.com
DEMO Debut: Salesforce.com, 2000

Benioff founded Salesforce.com in 1999 with a vision to create an on-demand information management service that would replace traditional enterprise software technology. He is regarded as the leader of what he has termed "The End of Software," the belief that multi-tenant, cloud computing applications deliver immediate benefits at reduced risks and costs. Under Benioff's direction, salesforce.com has grown from a groundbreaking idea into a publicly traded company that is a market and technology leader in enterprise cloud computing.

Mike Cassidy
Co-Founder & CEO, Ruba, Xfire, Direct Hit, and Stylus Innovation
DEMO Debut: Xfire, 2005

Visual travel guide and tour site Ruba helps travelers all over the world share their favorite places and experiences. Xfire helps gamers play online with their friends more easily. Xfire is also an instant messenger and peer-to-peer file download system designed just for gamers. Xfire has more than 10 million registered gamers in over 100 countries. Viacom/MTV acquired Xfire for $110 million. Direct Hit was a revolutionary Internet search engine whose customers included MSN, Lycos, AOL, and dozens of others. Ask Jeeves acquired Direct Hit for $500 million. Stylus Innovation's flagship product was the computer telephony software Visual Voice.

Ed Colligan
Former President and CEO, Palm, Inc.
DEMO Debut: Palm, Inc., 1996

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Colligan has been instrumental in building Palm's business and culture since 1993. During the last four years as CEO, he drove Palm's Palm webOS platform and Palm Pre phone, and was responsible for company strategy. Prior to being named president and CEO, Colligan was senior vice president and general manager of the company's Wireless Business Unit. He has been part of starting or founding five technology companies in Silicon Valley, including Handspring, the company behind the design and development of the Treo smartphone. As president and COO, he designed the marketing strategy for Handspring's handheld computers and smartphones.

Donna Dubinsky
Founder, CEO & Board Chair, Numenta
DEMO Debut: Palm, Inc., 1996

Dubinsky in 1992 became president and CEO of Palm, a position she held through Palm's acquisition by U.S. Robotics and subsequently 3Com. In 1998, she and Jeff Hawkins co-founded Handspring, creator of the Treo smartphone. In 2003, Handspring merged with the Palm hardware group to create a new company, palmOne (now called Palm).

Diane Greene
Entrepreneur, Founder & Former CEO, VMware
DEMO Debut: VMware, 1999

Greene was CEO of VMware from 1998 to 2008, taking the company from zero to $1.8 billion in revenue and creating the market for mainstream virtualization. In 1995 Greene co-founded and was CEO of VXtreme, a video streaming company bought by Microsoft in 1997.

Helen Greiner
CEO of Droid Works, Inc.
DEMO Debut: iRobot, 2000

The Droid Works is a start-up whose mission is to be a "skunkworks" for robotics. She is co-founder of iRobot which she transformed, with business partners Colin Angle and Rod Brooks, from an MIT spin-off into a $300 million business and the global leader of practical robots. Greiner served as president of iRobot until 2004 and chairman until October 2008. At iRobot, she created a culture of practical innovation and delivery that led to the creation and deployment of the PackBot, PackBot EOD, PackBot MTRS, Aware Robot Operating System, and participation in many DARPA, Army and Navy research programs.

Jeff Hawkins
Founder, Numenta
DEMO Debut: Palm, Inc., 1996

Jeff Hawkins is a co-founder of two companies, Palm and Handspring, and is the architect of many computing products such as the PalmPilot and Treo smartphone. Throughout his life Jeff has also had a deep interest in neuroscience and theories of the neocortex. His interest in the brain led him to create the non-profit Redwood Neuroscience Institute (RNI), a scientific institute focused on understanding how the human neocortex processes information. While at RNI, Hawkins developed a theory of neocortex which appeared in his 2004 book, On Intelligence. With the team of Dileep George and Donna Dubinsky, Hawkins founded Numenta in 2005 to develop a technology platform derived from his theory. It is his hope that Numenta will play a catalytic role in creating an industry based on this theory and technology.

Subrah Iyar
Founder &Former CEO, WebEx
DEMO Debut: WebEx, 1999

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Iyar co-founded WebEx Communications with Min Zhu in 1996, and led the business as the chairman and CEO through the IPO on Nasdaq in 2000 and its acquisition by Cisco in 2007 for $3.2 billion. WebEx was the first company to offer Web-conferencing services over the Internet. WebEx also spawned a variety of innovative usages including distance learning, online sales and support, and remote design. Iyar is currently working with Cisco CEO John Chambers as the chief strategy officer to establish Cisco as a leader in the software-as-a-service arena through its WebExConnect platform.

Keng Lim
Founder, Chairman & CEO, NextLabs
DEMO Debut: Kiva, 1997

Over the last 18 years, Lim has built Internet and software companies including Approach Software, Kiva Software, Netscape, Escalate and Sygate Technologies. He has been recognized by several key organizations as one of the industry's "most influential people on the Internet." Lim is known for his abilities to identify new markets and emerging technologies and to create new category-defining products.

Kevin Lynch
CTO, Senior VP, Experience & Technology Organization, Adobe Systems
DEMO Debut: Adobe Systems (for Air/Flex), 2007

Lynch oversees Adobe's experience design and core technology across business units. This role includes driving Adobe's technology platform for designers and developers across desktops and devices, including Adobe Flash Player, PDF, Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR. He also oversees Adobe's developer relations program, including the integration of customers and partners in the development process through Adobe Labs and customer advisory councils.

Teresa Meng
Reid Weaver Dennis Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Stanford University
DEMO Debut: Atheros Communciations, 1999

Meng's research activities during her first 10 years at Stanford focused on low-power circuit and system design, video signal processing and wireless communications. In 1999, Meng took leave from Stanford and founded Atheros Communications, where she developed low-cost Wi-Fi semiconductors in the 5GHz band. Having successfully launched Atheros, Meng returned to Stanford in 2000 to continue her research and teaching.

Andy Rubin
Vice President, Engineering, Google
DEMO Debut: Danger Research, 2001

Rubin joined Google in 2005 is responsible for the overall product strategy and development of the Android platform. Prior to joining Google, he was founder and CEO of Android, a company he incubated as an entrepreneur in residence at Redpoint Ventures. Android was acquired by Google in 2005. Previously, Rubin was president and CEO of Danger where he helped create the Sidekick, one of the first consumer data devices. Earlier, Rubin was instrumental in building and shipping WebTV, the first interactive television-based Internet service, which was acquired by Microsoft in 1995. He also led the effort to ship the Motorola Envoy, one of the first wireless PDAs for General Magic, and helped design the first host-based software modem for Apple Computer.