Kevin O'Connor

Cofounder of DoubleClick

• Born: April 4, 1961
• Place of Birth: Livonia, Michigan

Primary Company/Organization: DoubleClick

Introduction

Best known for his founding of DoubleClick, which at its prime was the most successful Internet advertising company in existence, Kevin O'Connor is also an author, a college professor, and an astute investor. He became successful in business immediately after graduating from college and continued to hone his computer and financial skills. O'Connor has said that one of the most influential jobs he ever had in his life was working as an assistant wrestling coach, a job that taught him what he needed to understand human nature. O'Connor has spent his life trying to make things happen rather than waiting for events to unfold. He has been called a “serial entrepreneur” because of his tendency to leave a company once it has become successful and move on to the next venture. When people complain about ubiquitous advertising on the Internet, O'Connor reminds them that it is the presence of advertising that keeps the Internet free for the public.

Early Life

Kevin O'Connor was born on April 4, 1961, in Livonia, Michigan, near Detroit. As a child, he loved to experiment. He discovered computers at the age of twelve, and by the age of thirteen he was already demonstrating a flair for electronics and inventions. Both parents were supportive of his efforts, and he found a ready partner for his adventures in his father, an electrical engineer. When O'Connor set the garage on fire when he attempted to launch a hot-air balloon he had built, losing the balloon, his father helped him build another one. Young Kevin and a friend spent hours building go-carts. O'Connor attended Detroit Catholic Central High School, graduating in 1979. In 1983, he completed his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering at the University of Michigan.

After completing his undergraduate degree, O'Connor began graduate school, intending to obtain a doctorate, but he soon dropped out. Instead, he and his friends Bill Miller and Michael Schier founded the Intercomputer Communications Corporation in Cincinnati in 1983. O'Connor had become friendly with Miller while serving an internship at Texas Instruments in Houston, where O'Connor had worked on an IBM computer. The year following the internship, O'Connor worked on another IBM project in Austin. Miller and Schier had become friends in high school. Financing for the new company came from Miller and Schier's consulting business and from a $25,000 investment from Miller's parents.

During this period when company mainframes controlled all computers, the idea of personal computers that operated on their own was alien to most employers. Thus, the Intercomputer Communications Corporation (ICC) was involved in the process of linking microcomputers to mainframe computers through local networks. O'Connor chiefly concentrated his efforts on what he calls “hard-core coding” and developing ICC's product line. In 1992, ICC was sold to DCA.

Between 1988 and 1992, which was the same time that O'Connor was making a name for himself in computer programming, he also worked as an assistant to Cincinnati Moeller High School wrestling coach Jeff Gaier. O'Connor said that working with young, sometimes reluctant, athletes taught him all he needed to know about life in order to succeed.

After ICC was purchased by DCA, O'Connor became chief technical officer and vice president of research and development. However, he chose to leave DCA in 1995, only a week after the company had been acquired by Attachmate, a San Francisco–based software company.

Life's Work

Toward the end of 1995, O'Connor and Dwight Merriman founded the Internet Advertising Network, the company that was to become DoubleClick. The company was founded in the basement of O'Connor's home in Alpharetta, a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. DoubleClick's sole purpose was to make money by promoting the Internet. Discarding the notion of basing the service on subscriptions, O'Connor and Merriman opted to sell advertising. Internet advertising was still in its infancy at the time, and it was up to O'Connor and Merriman to devise the best possible strategy for accomplishing their goals. They divided responsibilities, with O'Connor serving as manager and product designer and Merriman writing code. The entire workforce of DoubleClick consisted of the two founders, a computer programmer, and a salesperson.

Learning that a group of academics had created a company called DoubleClick that sold advertising over the Internet but lacked the technology to make the company profitable, O'Connor and Merriman worked out a deal to combine forces with them, raising their total workforce to eight individuals. When it became evident that DoubleClick needed to be where media companies and publishers were located, O'Connor and Merriman chose to relocate DoubleClick to New York City rather than following the technology trend to Silicon Valley on the West Coast. That move was profitable for New York, which subsequently developed as Silicon Alley. DoubleClick brought in Wenda Harris Millard, a marketing expert with twenty years of experience to her credit, and for his business acumen Kevin P. Ryan, who became chief executive officer (CEO) when O'Connor chose to step down in 2006 (he felt the company had grown to such an extent that it no longer suited his needs).

When O'Connor and Merriman joined forces with the existing DoubleClick, BJK&E owned a large share of DoubleClick, but company executives were anxious to divest themselves of DoubleClick as the Internet exploded on the public consciousness. O'Connor entered into negotiations with Yahoo! to buy DoubleClick for $95 million, but financial backing amounting to $40 million was generated from West Coast technology investors and Boston's venture capitalists. That funding allowed DoubleClick to spend $25 million to buy out BJK&E's interest in DoubleClick.

DoubleClick continued to place a strong emphasis on the needs of its customers, and the company went public in 1998, eight months after that first round of financing. By that time, the company had generated $80 million in revenue over a two-year period. In 1999, $1.6 billion shares were offered for stock purchasing. By 2000, DoubleClick was employing twenty-five hundred workers in twenty separate companies. At the same time, the company was faced with a number of lawsuits filed by privacy advocates over the decision to tie data derived from new credit card purchases to information gathered on web users. O'Connor quickly backtracked and created new positions to protect privacy rights. He hired Jules Polonetsky, a former consumer affairs commissioner, as chief policy officer and recruited Robert Abrams, a former New York State attorney general, as the chairman of DoubleClick's Privacy Board.

Amid the privacy lawsuits and the dot-com collapse in 2000, DoubleClick saw its fortunes begin to decline. Stock prices fell by 50 percent, and the company began laying off workers. Within three years, it had begun to recover. In July 2005, DoubleClick was sold to Hellman and Friedman, a company that specializes in private equity, for $1.1 billion, and O'Connor stepped down as CEO and chairman. Two years later, Google acquired DoubleClick from Hellman and Friedman for $3.1 billion. Google continues to make use of the technology created by O'Connor and Merriman, such as the DoubleClick Ad Planner, which allows advertisers to research and identify websites that are visited by their target audience.

During DoubleClick's glory years, O'Connor, along with coauthor Paul Brown, wrote The Map of Innovation: Creating Something Out of Nothing. The book explains how to take an idea or service and turn it into a successful business enterprise. O'Connor's business philosophy focuses on the notion that it is necessary to make lightning strike rather than wait on the off chance that it might strike on its own. He has summarized his ideas in a method that he calls the “brainstorming prioritization technique” (BPT), admitting that it is poor name. The technique involves brainstorming ideas before settling on a single one to pursue. Success is derived, according to O'Connor, from choosing the correct strategy for marketing the product so that it reaches the proper client base.

O'Connor has repeatedly said that he enjoys building up a company and then moving on, leaving the running of the companies he started to individuals who are better at maintaining ongoing operations. He founded O'Connor Ventures in 2001 to manage his investments. Because of his interest in innovation, he specializes in investing in start-up technology companies such as 9 Star, Surfline, Travidia, ProCore, and Campus Explorer. O'Connor served on the board of Flexplay Technology, a start-up that manufactures recyclable DVDS that allow customers to bypass trips to video stores and forgo late fees for failing to return items on time.

At the urging of Internet Security Systems founder Chris Claus, O'Connor invested in the Atlanta-based company. It proved to be a wise investment: The company issued its initial public offering four years later. In 2006, IBM purchased Internet Security Systems for $1.3 billion.

In 2009, O'Connor cofounded the Santa Barbara, California–based Graphiq (formerly FindTheBest), a search engine that operates on the principle of locating the best matches for search terms by comparing possible matches. Promoting itself as a service offering “easy-to-use tables with smart filters,” the site insists that its data are free of marketing involvement. Categories included business, education, electronics, health, home and family, motors, software, sports and recreation, and travel and lifestyles. The company was acquired by Amazon in 2018, and O'Connor stepped down as CEO in May of that year. He joined ScOP Venture Capital in June 2018 as a managing partner. In 2021 he was on the boards of COR, Surfline Wavetrak, and ProCore.

Personal Life

O'Connor lives in Santa Barbara, California, with his wife; they have three children. He spends part of his time lecturing at local universities. O'Connor has announced on his O'Connor Ventures website that he continues to pursue his hobbies of surfing, skiing, heliskiing, weightlifting, and basketball. He strengthens bonds with his children by coaching their soccer, basketball, and wrestling teams.

Bibliography

Budman, Matthew. “Kevin O'Connor Says That Hunkering Down Is Never a Good Idea.” Across the Board 40.4 (2003): 11–12. Print.

Messina, Judith. “Kevin O'Connor and the Mouse That Roared: The Founder of Online Advertising Network DoubleClick Paved Way for City's Fastest Growing Sector.” Crain's New York Business 16.20 (2000): 30–32. Print.

"Kevin O’Connor." ScOp Venture Capital, 2021, www.scopvc.com/kevin-oconnor. Accessed 7 Mar. 2024.

O'Connor, Kevin. “Interview with Kevin O'Connor.” Kaizen: Ethics and Entrepreneurship 20 Apr. 2009: n. pag. Print.

---, and Paul B. Brown. The Map of Innovation: Creating Something Out of Nothing. New York: Crown, 2003. Print.

Rankin, Rose. “Insights for Online Targeting with DoubleClick Ad Planner.” Marketing Week 33.16 (2010): n. pag. Print.