Gaps in Analytics: Jon Kondo, CEO of Host Analytics (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Jon Kondo is the CEO of Host Analytics, a provider of cloud-based analytics and business intelligence tools. Prior to serving as the CEO at Host Analytics, Jon was North American Group Vice President at Oracle where he was responsible for 200+ people and all EPM revenue. Prior to Oracle, he had full P&L responsibility for the Americas Field Organization at Hyperion. Jon managed Hyperion’s push into the analytics space as the global head of BI. He began his career as a sales intern with IBM,  holds an MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management and a BA in Economics from UC Santa Barbara

Sramana: Jon, let’s go back to the beginning of your personal story. Tell me where you are from, where you grew up, and your story leading up to Host Analytics.

Jon Kondo: I was born in New York and grew up in Connecticut. My dad moved our family out to Southern California in the early 1970s. He was an aerospace engineer and moved for a job opportunity. I spent my formative years in Southern California and attended college at the University of California Santa Barbara. I then worked in Los Angeles in the telecommunications industry right after deregulation.

I started my sales career while I was at UC Santa Barbara as a sales intern with IBM. I had my first customer experience as a sales intern. I went on to sell telecommunications equipment. While I was working in a training course for my telecommunications class, I met a couple of guys from northern California. One day they called me and told me they had quit their jobs to open a promotional marketing agency in San Jose. They asked me to come up and join them. That was in 1986.

I dropped everything. I quit my job to accept a position with zero income to help bootstrap the company. We each put in $2,000 to start the company. We built it up, and I stayed there for almost four years. I decided that part of what I wanted to do was get my MBA, so I went to Thunderbird and got my MBA in International Business.

I came out of Thunderbird in 1992 and went into outsourced manufacturing. I sold to software companies. Back then software companies sold physical products, and we manufactured their magnetic diskettes, manuals and boxes. We did the back office functionality for a lot of software companies. I was a worldwide account manager and got to travel all over the world.

In 1998, I decided I wanted to be on the software side of the business, so I joined Arbor Software. At the time, we did about $80 million and then we merged with Hyperion. I had several roles with Hyperion. I started out as a sales rep, then became a sales director and regional VP. I left for a while to go to a startup sales team, which lasted about a year. I learned as much in a year failing with a startup as I ever have being successful. I ended up going back to Hyperion after they bought Brio to start the BI team there. It was a startup within a large organization. We turned that into a big growth engine, and I became the global BI leader and ultimately the general manager for the Americas and ran a $600 million piece of business.

We then got bought by Oracle, and I went through the Oracle acquisition. I went there as the head of all Hyperion field assets in North America. I stayed there for about a year before I was recruited to come and run Host Analytics. I came over here in June of 2008. I am coming up on my four-year anniversary here.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Gaps in Analytics: Jon Kondo, CEO of Host Analytics
1 2 3 4 5 6 7