Chairman and CEO, Rival Theory*
Director, Product Management, Google
Chairman, Founder and CEO, Eyefluence, Inc.
Chairman, Founder, and CEO, Livescribe, Inc.
Advisory Board, Luminar*
Advisory Board, Ideator*
Board Member, Gleason Family Foundation*
Advisory Board, Computer Science and Engineering, Washington University, St. Louis*
President, LeapFrog Internet Division
Advisory Board, Earthwatch
Co-Founder and CEO, Explore Technologies, Inc.
Engineering Co-Founder, StrataCom
SW Engineer, ROLM
For more than 30 years, Jim Marggraff has dedicated his energy, vision, and inventiveness to developing standards, applications, technology and products for companies committed to creating innovative solutions, improving learning, and advancing human thought.
In 2018, Jim became CEO of Rival Theory, following four years as Chairman. Rival Theory is creating the world’s first AI relationship network, developing AI Personas of real people, to evoke the best in humanity. Rival Theory’s Personas of world leaders and influencers provide personal interaction with millions of people who would not otherwise be able to access the support, coaching, and guidance of these people. Ultimately, Rival Theory will expand and improve relationships globally, with AIs for all people, to improve human communication, compassion and understanding.
Most recently, in 2016, Jim sold Eyefluence, a company he had founded in 2013, to Google. Eyefluence developed technology that transforms intent into action through your eyes. With Eyefluence technology, a person wearing a head-mounted display (HMD) such as Google Glass, Oculus, or other HMDs, could interact with the display, and control or interact with objects in their world, simply by moving their eyes, with no waiting, no winking, just looking.
Prior to founding Eyefluence, in 2007, Jim founded Livescribe, as the inventor of the world’s first smartpen. Under Jim’s guidance, Livescribe generated over 2 billion media impressions, dozens of awards for its Pulse and Echo platforms, and sales of over two million smartpens in more than 40 countries, to create a global brand for a new product category.
Jim’s idea for a smartpen developed during his 7 years at LeapFrog. Jim had sold his previous company, Explore Technologies, to LeapFrog in 1998, where he helped grow LeapFrog from $31 million to $680 million annual sales in five years. As the inventor of the world-renowned LeapPad Learning System, Jim’s dedication to technology-based learning helped LeapFrog sell over $1 billion of LeapPads and educational content worldwide in less than 5 years. Jim’s voice, as a lead voice-over talent for LeapFrog, greeted users of tens of millions of LeapPads. Jim’s inventions and content have impacted more than 100 million children and adults in reading, math, and language skills, and have sparked and fueled a passion for lifelong learning for people around the globe.
Before LeapFrog, Jim was engaged in inventing technologies and products, co-founding companies, assembling and inspiring teams, and pursuing world-changing ideas. Jim was an engineer on the founding team of StrataCom in 1984 (acquired by Cisco), and co-founded Explore Technologies in 1996 (acquired by LeapFrog), to develop technology to reframe our perception of geography with the world’s first Atlasphere, an interactive globe.
Jim is a prolific speaker, with 2 presentations on the TED main stage, All Things Digital, DEMO, Future in Review, the Milken Global Economic Conference, the Aspen Ideas Festival, Bloomberg TV, JavaOne, Building 43, Dust Or Magic, AdAge’s IDEA Conference, CM Summit, the Director’s Guild of America, The E.G., TTI/Vanguard, Imagine Solutions, Ciudad de las Ideas, Columbia Business School, MIT, Rotary Conferences, and many other local and global events featuring thought-leaders and innovators.
Jim’s entrepreneurialism and innovations have been covered by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Financial Times, The Telegraph, Herald Tribune, SF Chronicle, SJ Mercury News, The Atlantic Monthly, Wired, Time, Fortune, Technology Review, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, Business Week, CNet, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Oprah, Good Morning America, The Today Show, Cavuto, QVC, Bloomberg, CNN, FOX, and hundreds of other periodicals, blogs, and broadcast media.
From 1999-2010, products created by Jim received hundreds of awards from around the world, including multiple “Toy of the Year” awards from the Toy Industry of America. In 2004, Jim was recognized by the American Diabetes Association and Father’s Day Council of San Francisco as “Father of the Year”. In 2005, the “Fly Pentop Computer” that Jim created at LeapFrog, won the “Most Innovative Toy of the Year”, “the Most Educational Toy of the Year”, and the overall “Toy of the Year”, an unprecedented number of “TOTY” awards for a single product.
In June 2011, Jim received Ernst & Young’s “Entrepreneur of the Year” award for the Northern California region, and was inducted into the Entrepreneur of the Year “Hall of Fame”. Jim has subsequently become a judge for this program. Also in 2011, Jim’s LeapPad invention was also listed in the “MIT 150” – the top 150 inventions and contributions from MIT graduates.
On a local, community level, Jim is active in his home town of Lafayette, with the Lamorinda Sunrise Rotary Club, and supports the local public school system with technology donations. In 2017, Jim led Rotary International’s adoption of VR with a new concept he called a “VR-a-Thon”. Jim drove the financing, and was Executive Producer of a VR piece, One Small Act, produced in Romania, focused on polio eradication and the elimination of violence as a means of conflict resolution. This piece was experienced by over 3,000 Rotarians simultaneously at Rotary’s Annual World Conference in Atlanta in June 2017, setting a world record for the largest co-located viewing of a VR piece, and will be distributed globally to Rotarians in the world’s first VR-a-Thon in 2018.
As another channel for his passion for innovation and founding, Jim has written a book, How to Raise a Founder with Heart, comprising stories, science and suggestions for “founding” to parents who would like to instill a founder’s mindset, and skills, in their children. His book will be published in 2018.
Jim is also a board member of the Gleason Foundation, supporting former New Orleans Saints football player, Steve Gleason, a person with ALS, in Steve’s fight against the disease and a public inspiration to others with disabilities. Jim joined Steve to speak at the UN in 2013 on the topic of startups addressing disabilities.
Jim received his SB and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, and holds 34 patents.
* Roles in which Jim is currently active
Buy UNLVxTED tickets today!
