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Today's Featured Biography

 
Greg Johnson

Summing up 25 years in a few paragraphs, probably a futile effort, but I'll take a shot.

After graduation, I went to UW-Whitewater and graduated in 1987 with a degree in Acconting. I moved to Minneapolis to work for Deloitte and Touche, an international public accounting firm. After a couple years, an opportunity to transfer to one of the southern California offices came up and, being 25, it sounded like a great idea (and a great way to get out of the cold), so I went.

I lived in beautiful Orange County (not really a lot like "The OC", except for the weather) for 12 years. I worked in the wireless telecom business (AirTouch Cellular in finance), Disneyland (Assistant Controller), the HMO industry (PacifiCare in M&A) and a few start ups that really didn't go much of anywhere. While living in So Cal, I earned my MBA from the University of California in 2000.

In 2000 I accepted an offer from an online automotive company located in San Francisco (OpenAuto.com). Unfortunately, this was about the time of the dot.com crash and the company lost funding and went out of business.

I then went back to working for a larger company, Sybase, a data base company located in the Bay Area. While it was a pretty safe move, it was not very entrepreneurial and not very exciting. By the way, the data base industry is very very mature.

Wanting to do something a little more adventurous, I started working for a very early stage start up - actually founded by a couple guys from my first failed dot.com venture. I took on the role of Chief Financial Officer - when there were five employees - so I was the whole finence department. The Company, Jumpstart Automotive Media, ended up being a great adventure. We grew from less than a $1.0 million in annual revenue to over $50 million and from five employees to over 100. In 2007, after a very hectic year that included closing our first round of venture capital funding in 2006, we sold the Company to a $20 Billion French media company (Lagardere, or more accurately, one of their US subsidiaries, Hachette Filipachhi Media). The deal took about 5 months to close, which meant that I pretty much worked seven days a week for the whole time.

After closing the deal, I took a vacation and it occurred to me that I had earned a bit of time off - so I'm technically retired - although at 42 (43 next week), I suspect that I probably should get back to work at some point.

For now, I'm enjoying my time off by traveling, working out and actually reconnecting with family and friends who I've neglected over the past couple years.

Otherwise, I like to travel (been through most of Europe, China, Mexico, and the bulk of the US). Since we live so close to Napa, we get there pretty regularly and we began collecting wine a number of years back.

Louis and I have been together for six years now, one of the other great things that happened to me while living in San Francisco. No kids, no pets (a couple of sickly looking houseplants probably indicate that the no kids no pets thing might be a good thing). I do have the most adorable neice and nephew - which gives me the opportunity to spoil them without dealing with the consequences.

If you're ever in SF, let me know, it would be great to see some SPHS folks.

Looking forward to seeing everyone this year of our 25th.

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