1. Philippe Kahn was born on March 16,1952 and is a French engineer, entrepreneur, and founder of four technology companies: Borland, Starfish Software, LightSurf Technologies, and Fullpower Technologies.
24 Facts About Philippe Kahn
1. 2.
Philippe Kahn is the son of Charles-Henri Kahn and Claire Monis.
3.
Philippe Kahn was born to Jewish immigrants of modest means.
4.
Philippe Kahn's mother was a French singer, actress, and violinist, raised in Paris by parents who had fled the Russian pogroms.
5.
Philippe Kahn survived as a member of the Auschwitz Women's Orchestra conducted by Alma Rose.
6.
Philippe Kahn was only 15 years old when his mother died in a car accident in Paris.
7.
Philippe Kahn was educated in mathematics at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland, on a full scholarship and University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, France.
8.
Philippe Kahn received a master's in musicology composition and classical flute performance at the Zurich Music Conservatory in Switzerland.
9.
Philippe Kahn has founded four software companies: Borland, founded in 1982, Starfish Software, founded in 1994, LightSurf Technologies, founded in 1998, and Fullpower Technologies, founded in 2005.
10.
Philippe Kahn founded Borland in 1982, and was its CEO until 1995.
11.
Philippe Kahn was President, CEO, and Chairman of Borland and, without venture capital, took Borland from no revenues to a US$500 million run-rate.
12.
Philippe Kahn encouraged a collegial and hard-charging atmosphere at Borland, which attracted and cultivated technology leaders including Anders Hejlsberg, creator of Turbo Pascal, and Marc Randolph, cofounder of Netflix.
13.
Philippe Kahn created prototype sleep trackers using biosensors that optimized 26-minute power naps to maximize sleep benefits and sail time.
14.
In 1997, Philippe Kahn created the first camera phone solution sharing pictures instantly on public networks.
15.
Philippe Kahn had been working for almost a year on a web server-based infrastructure for pictures, that he called Picture Mail.
16.
At the hospital, while his wife was in labor, Philippe Kahn jury-rigged a connection between a mobile phone and a digital camera and sent off photos in real time to the picture messaging infrastructure he had running in his home.
17.
In 2017, Subconscious Films created a short film recreating the day that Philippe Kahn instantly shared the first camera-phone photo of the birth of his daughter Sophie.
18.
Philippe Kahn was a key speaker at the pivotal gay rights conference on the Apple campus on October 19,1993.
19.
Philippe Kahn has four children, three of whom are from his first marriage.
20.
Philippe Kahn later married Sonia Lee, with whom he has a daughter, Sophie.
21.
Philippe Kahn's focus on the environment and the outdoors led him to the sport of sailing.
22.
Philippe Kahn's sailing team, Pegasus Racing, has competed in numerous international world championships.
23.
An offshore sailor with over 10 trans-Pacific crossings, Philippe Kahn holds the Transpac double handed record from San Francisco to Oahu, Hawaii.
24.
Philippe Kahn's sailing achievements include winning the double handed division of the 2009 Transpacific Yacht Race from Los Angeles to Hawaii and setting the Transpac record at 7 days, 19 hours, beating the previous time of 10 days, 4 hours.