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. At the LF, Dan is responsible for member relations, helps coordinate working groups including Carrier Grade Linux and the Mobile Linux Initiative, and manages the multi-million dollar outsourcing partnership with the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is particularly focused on the successul retooling and marketing relaunch of the Linux Standard Base.

Dan worked for 5 years as a general partner at Skymoon Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital firm in Palo Alto that created startups related to semiconductors and telecoms infrastructure. Skymoon generated business plans in-house, recruited teams to execute themm and nurtured these companies as they grew. Dan was the CEO of Pedestal Networks, an innovative DSL equipment company, from inception; hired the management team and grew the company to 50 people; oversaw development of the product and first revenue; raised $14 M in venture capital; and after 2 years, helped recruit the permanent CEO. The company was later acquired by UT Starcom. He also conceived, recruited the management team, established the critical partnerships for launch, and raised $7.5 M in venture capital for Habeas, an email accreditation and reputation company that helps legitimate mailers ensure delivery. Dan continues to serve on the Habeas board. Dan was the founding CEO of Dash Networks, a Wi-Fi-enabled dashboard navigation device that will soon be marketed nationwide.

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 $1.5 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 have a young son, Adam, and live in Pacific Grove, CA.

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