Michael Baum (entrepreneur)

Michael Baum (born May 28, 1962) is an American entrepreneur and investor. He is best known as the Founder & CEO of Splunk, a big data software technology used for understanding machine-generated data primarily for systems management,[1] security forensics,[2] compliance reporting[3] and real-time operational intelligence.[4] Baum is the founder of six technology start-ups, five of which have been acquired and one (NASDAQ: SPLK) which went public.[5] He has also been a venture capital investor with Rembrandt Venture Partners, Advent International and Crosspoint Venture Partners. Baum graduated with a computer science degree from Drexel University and an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In September 2014, Baum became CEO & Propriétaire of Château de Pommard, a Burgundy winery established in 1726.

Michael Baum
Born
Michael Joseph Baum

May 28, 1962 (1962-05-28) (age 58)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
EducationWharton School at the University of Pennsylvania
Drexel University
OccupationEntrepreneur, Investor and Philanthrapist
Known forFounder & CEO of Founder.org
Board member of Gemini Data
Co-founder & CEO of Splunk
Founder of Big Data Supper Club
Co-founder of Collation
VP e-Commerce at Yahoo!
Co-founder & COO of DotBank
VP e-Commerce at Disney
Co-founder & CEO of 280
Co-founder & CEO of Pensoft
Co-founder & CTO at Reality
CEO & Propriétaire at Chateau de Pommard
Parent(s)Mardell A. Baum
Richard L. Baum, Sr.
Websitefounder.org

Early life and education

Baum was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and attended high school at Cherry Hill High School East, where he was a New Jersey state high school swimmer for four years. During his sophomore year at Drexel University, he changed majors from electrical engineering to computer science after a visit to the campus by Steve Jobs;[6] the focus of his bachelor's degree was artificial intelligence and compiler and language theory. During his studies he worked as an intern at the IBM Silicon Valley Lab developing language parsing engines and with IBM Entry Systems Division where he was a software engineer responsible for power-on self-test on the original IBM PC BIOS. He went on to earn a Masters of Business Administration with a focus on corporate finance from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.[7] During his time at Wharton, Baum played hooker with the Wharton Rugby Team, and started the Wharton Venture Capital Club.

Career

During his time at college, Baum was curious to understand how computers and software could be applied to enable people to process large amounts of data in complex decision-making. He published his thesis titled Information Chunking and Human Decision Making.

“When I graduated from Drexel my plan was to become a researcher, but I realized after being offered positions with companies like IBM and Microsoft that being an entrepreneur would give me a better opportunity to see my ideas make an impact on the world around me," says Baum.

Baum pursued a career in technology and entrepreneurship. He teamed with co-founders Mark Goldstein and Doug Alexander and started Reality Online, a stock market modeling company.[6] Reality Online was funded by Venrock, the venture capital arm of the Rockefeller family, and later acquired by Reuters in 1989.

After graduate school, Baum moved to Silicon Valley and started his second company, Pensoft, a software company that created a small footprint object-oriented database for wireless devices including the GO Corporation's pen-based computing operating system. It was here he first met Rob Das, the company's Chief Architect. Pensoft was backed by Institutional Venture Partners and Mohr Davidow Ventures. AT&T acquired the company in 1993. In his third start-up venture, Baum connected with Rob Das and Erik Swan as co-founders at 280, an early hosted business collaboration platform exploiting the Java (programming language) to bring real-time interaction around unstructured data to the Internet. Crosspoint Venture Partners backed 280. The company was acquired by Infoseek in 1997. Infoseek partnered with and later merged into The Walt Disney Company to form Disney Internet Group where Baum was VP of e-Commerce. Baum left Disney and joined co-founder Robert Simon to start his fourth company, dotBank, an Internet money exchange platform for person to person and business to business payments, synthetic currencies and financial transactions.[8] dotBank was later acquired by Yahoo![9] where Baum became VP of e-Commerce.

In September 2014, Baum bought Château de Pommard, a Burgundy winery established in 1726,[6][10] and moved to Burgundy with his family.[11]

Splunk
Main article: Splunk

Continuing to explore the possibilities of advancing an understanding of chaotic systems,[12] Baum began to explore the application of search technology to large-scale machine data. Reconnecting with Rob Das and Erik Swan in 2003, the three co-founded Splunk.[13] Their goal was to build a search engine for real-time flows and massive historical corpuses of machine data.[14] Splunk was the sixth startup for Baum and the first pure-play big data company to reach significant customer and revenue scale and debut on the public markets. Baum, Das and Swan and their team at Splunk have been awarded two US Patents for their work.[15][16]

Baum was Splunk's founding CEO for the first six years.[17] He raised $40M in venture capital financing from August Capital,[18] Seven Rosen Funds, JK&B Capital[19] and Ignition Partners.[20]

References
  1. Stephen Sowyer. "Data Center Troubleshooting Rx". Enterprise Systems Journal website. Retrieved February 2, 2006.
  2. David Hubler. "Search fuels one small firm's dream of big data success". Washington Technology, The Authority for Government Contractors and Partners. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
  3. Andrew Gillies. "Mining Government Tech Dollars". Forbes. Retrieved April 23, 2008.
  4. Victor Hwang. "Revamping Spacecraft Operational Intelligence". NASA Technical Reports. Retrieved June 10, 2012.
  5. Olaf de Senerpont Domis. "Splunk shows spunk in market debut". The Deal. Retrieved April 20, 2012.
  6. Will Smale (March 23, 2020). "'I bought a winery and it caused a US-French row". BBC News Business.
  7. Jennifer Royer. "Given Thanks to Alumni Inspired Excellence". Wharton Magazine. Retrieved November 27, 2012.
  8. Gallagher; et al. (September 7, 2010). "Person to Person Money Exchange, United States Patent 7,792,20". US Patent Office.
  9. Lori Enos (March 24, 2000). "Yahoo! Targets eBay with Payment Service Acquisition". E-Commerce Times.
  10. "Château de Pommard". Château de Pommard Official Website.
  11. "Expert Advice: Michael Baum, CEO & Propriétaire of Château de Pommard". Visit French Wine.
  12. Clint Boulton. "Michael Baum, CEO Splunk Interview". Internet News. Retrieved September 22, 2006.
  13. "2006 Horizon Awards Winner: Splunk". ComputerWorld. Retrieved August 21, 2006.
  14. Lisa Vaas. "Splunk Brings Google-Like Search to the Data Center". eWeek. Retrieved August 9, 2005.
  15. Baum; et al. "Machine Data Web, United States Patent 7,937,344". United States Patent Office. Retrieved July 1, 2005.
  16. Baum; et al. "Time Series Search Engine, United States Patent 8,112,425". United States Patent Office. Retrieved August 28, 2006.
  17. Jeremy Geelan. "Splunk's Michael Baum Speaks with Jeremy Geelan". Sys-Con.TV.
  18. David Hornik. "A Tribute to Splunk". VentureBlog: A Walk Down Sand Hill Road. Retrieved July 1, 2012.
  19. "Splunk Gets $10M". Light Reading. Retrieved January 25, 2006.
  20. Matt Marshall (September 11, 2007). "Splunk, search engine for IT data, raises $25M". VentureBeat.
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