Dan Kohn

Chief Operating Officer, Linux Foundation

Dan is an entrepreneur and investor and serves as the COO of the Linux Foundation (LF). The LF is a not-for-profit trade group working to promote, protect, and standardize Linux. Dan is also the co-founder and CTO of Healing Thresholds Autism Therapy, a free website and email newsletter dedicated to healing the lives of families touched by autism. We provide comprehensive therapy fact sheets, daily updates of autism therapy research and news, and a global directory of autism-related therapists and services.

Dan was a general partner at Skymoon Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital firm that created startups in semiconductors and telecoms infrastructure. Skymoon generated business plans in-house, recruited teams to execute them, and nurtured these companies as they grew. Dan co-founded and served as the initial CEO of Pedestal Networks, an innovative DSL equipment company (sold to UT Starcom); Dash Networks, the first Internet-enabled automotive GPS device (sold to RIM); and Habeas, an email accreditation and reputation company that helps legitimate mailers ensure delivery (sold to Return Path). In each case, he hired the management team, assembled the business plan, and raised external venture capital funding.

For the previous 5 years, Dan helped manage several telecoms firms controlled by Craig McCaw, including XO Communications, Nextel, ICO, and Teledesic. He served as a key negotiator in transforming a $12 million portal outsourcing payment from Nextel to Netscape into a $600 million investment by Microsoft into Nextel. He authored the Teledesic and ICO business plans, refocusing ICO on data services, and helped raise $1.6 billion for the two companies. He conducted board-level presentations to partners around the world as part of multi-billion dollar investor and contract negotiations.

Dan started his career as founder and CEO of NetMarket, an early Internet company. In 1994, NetMarket set up the first music CD store, built the first commercial database-backed website, and conducted the first secure commercial transaction on the web. He later sold NetMarket to Cendant, a multi-billion dollar membership services company.

Dan received a bachelor's degree in Economics and Computer Science from the Honors program of Swarthmore College, and studied at Exeter and the London School of Economics. He is married to Dr. Julie Pullen, an oceanographer and meteorologist who works as a civilian scientist for the Navy. They live in Manhattan with their two young sons.

He can be reached at his blog, DanKohn.com, and at dan@dankohn.com.