Starting a successful company is a major business accomplishment, a mark of a distinguished career. Starting multiple successful companies and leading the vanguard of disruptive technical innovation is an even rarer track record of achievement.
That’s the track record that serial entrepreneur Doug Bartek continues to build on. He’s distinguished himself in a range of technology markets leading multiple startups and breakthrough ventures, including shepherding a company through a successful Initial Public Offering.
Throughout his four decades as a business executive, Doug built his reputation as a recognized leader by spearheading more than 20 successful company sales, acquisitions, mergers, and financings of high-tech firms.
In the early 1990s, Doug served as president and CEO of a startup called Acumos, which made innovative computer graphic chips. In 1992, Acumos was acquired by Cirrus Logic and Doug became president of a division at the company. He multiplied the division’s revenue by a factor of ten over five years to make it the company’s most profitable group.
Doug returned to the start-up world in 1996 by establishing communications semiconductor maker Microtune, which he eventually led to a successful IPO.
Doug’s current venture is built on his vision of enabling companies to take advantage of evolving mobile technologies. In 2005, he and Andrew Silver co-founded Tango Networks, the firm Doug leads today as president and CEO.
Hallmarks of Leadership
Supplementing and fostering his business world achievements, Doug’s education further illustrates his focus on success. He completed his Electrical Engineering undergraduate degree at the University of Texas, Austin, summa cum laude. He earned a Master of Engineering & Computer Science degree and a Master of Business Administration degree from Arizona State University.
Over the years, Doug has been recognized by the business community with a host of awards and designations spotlighting his business success and entrepreneurial focus, including Tech Titans CEO of the Year, NRCC BusinessMan of the Year, and E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year.
About Tango Networks
Doug’s current company, Tango Networks, empowers enterprises to maximize the reach, impact, and value of their communications systems by extending and integrating them with any mobile device. The company excels at offering products and services for mobile unified communications, enterprise text messaging, compliant mobile communications, mobile integration with CRM, and phone usage restrictions for company drivers. Tango Networks recently launched its Kinetic Cloud service in Europe and the Americas, enabling these solutions to be easily adopted by customers via the cloud.
Under Doug’s leadership, Tango Networks has won numerous industry awards for innovation and landed major contracts with Tier 1 mobile service providers and enterprises. Doug’s passion for innovation has led the company to deliver dozens of groundbreaking technical advancements, with the company recently receiving its 60th issued patent on the technology underlying its mobility solutions.
Sparking a Revolution
Mobile technology is transforming the world of communications. But most enterprises have not been able to take full advantage of this technology for their employees.
The problem is that mobile communications services available to enterprises are essentially the same ones designed for and sold to consumers. The features are very basic and not business standard. The communications themselves cannot be directly controlled by enterprise Information Technology staff.
But enterprises are demanding change. They want to control the features and costs of mobile communications just as they do today with landline communications, ensuring quality and complying with regulatory requirements.
Doug’s passion for innovation is sparking a revolution in enterprise mobile communications to meet these needs.
“Our Kinetic Communications technology turns mobile phones into extensions of a company’s communications systems,” he explains. With Tango Networks’ solutions, IT departments can control employees’ communications on mobiles just like they were using traditional desk phones. They can record calls with the same recording tools used for landlines. The result is that an enterprise can harness mobile technology to make employees highly efficient, responsive and productive without sacrificing control. In this way, Doug’s company is fundamentally changing how enterprises operate, a trend that some industry observers have described as the new generation of communications or the “Second Wave” of mobility.
The Challenge of Innovation
“Innovation drives me, but innovation is hard,” says Doug.
Anybody can see a problem and dream of potential solutions. But Doug recognized that turning such dreams into reality requires a practical understanding of how technology is actually adopted and used by customers. A good example is how Doug’s company has transformed the use of another company’s product called “Jabber.” A product from networking giant Cisco Networks, Jabber is an internal enterprise communications tool used by employees for sending messages to one another and collaborating on projects.
But Doug and his Tango Networks team recognized that the tool could be even more useful if it could enable employees to communicate with people outside the company who are not using Jabber.
In investigating this opportunity, Doug and his team learned that customers were excited to use Jabber in this new way. The Tango Networks’ technology team invented a way for Jabber’s internal messages to be turned into mobile network messages. Now a Jabber user could send and receive text messages from their business number and communicate with anyone on a mobile phone.
The result is a revolutionary new way for companies to communicate, using text messaging from business numbers to interact with customers, partners and others in the outside world.
Advice for Budding Entrepreneurs
“Embrace innovation and follow your vision,” Doug says. “But don’t overlook the opportunities that can appear right under your nose.”
Future Outlook
Doug believes that the world is ushering in a new era of mobility that puts an enterprise’s IT managers directly in control of employees’ mobile business communications. “I expect that this will be the norm industry-wide in the next five years.”
Source: The 10 Most Admired CEOs To Watch 2018
