Jim Marggraff has joined Oblong Industries, Inc.’s board of directors. The addition coincides with the extension of Oblong’s Mezzanine product family for content-rich teamwork, and the announcement of deeper software integrations with popular enterprise collaboration platforms such as Cisco Webex Teams, IBM Watson Workspace, and Slack.
Marggraff is a technologist, entrepreneur, and advocate for human excellence. His interests lie in evoking the best of humanity with AI. He currently advises Rival Theory, the world’s first AI relationship network, and Foresight AI, empowering mobile robots with data and intelligence. His contribution to Oblong builds upon several decades of corporate leadership as a founder/co-founder of StrataCom (acquired by Cisco in 1996 for $4B), Eyefluence (acquired by Google in 2016), and Livescribe (the world’s first smart pen). Marggraff is also noted for his work at Leapfrog, where he invented the renowned LeapPad Learning System with $1B+ in sales and impact on more than 100M children and adults globally. Jim is a celebrated member of his community, active Rotarian, E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year (Northern California, 2011), MIT Top 150 Inventor, author of “How to Raise a Founder with Heart” (September 2018), an inventor with dozens of patents issued, and an advisor to academic institutions and non-profit foundations.
“We’re honored to have such an accomplished visionary join our board,” said John Underkoffler, founder and CEO Oblong Industries. “He shares with us a deep interest in expanding human capability and collective cognition through advanced human-machine interface, as well as an unshakeable dedication to user-focused product excellence. We look forward to working with Jim to expand our impact globally.”
Foundry Group managing director Brad Feld, an Oblong board member since the company's first financing, said, "Jim's pursuit of technologies which maximize how human brains can be more effective in working together will be a tremendous asset for us."
"Oblong is at the precipice of explosive growth. The Company comprises a highly innovative team of experienced designers and technologists, with international sales, marketing, and operations expertise, led by a world leader in the future of human collaboration,” said Marggraff. “At a time when collaboration is a buzzword, and continuous innovation is table-stakes for all enterprises, nothing compares to the simplicity and ease of use of the platform Oblong has built with Mezzanine. Given my career focus on technologies that advance communication, cognition, and collaboration, I share a commitment with this team to enhance human potential through improved collective intelligence augmented with collaborative thought-environments. I see great things happening with Oblong and their partners.”
