Thomas M. Siebel

Early days

Thomas M. Siebel was born in Chicago, Illinois. He started to work in 1984 at Oracle, where he quickly stood out as a salesman and was appointed the vice president of the company. He resigned in 1990, tired of the attitude of winning-at-any-cost of the company. Siebel took this decision a year before the market value of Oracle collapsed. Siebel saw this fall coming and earned several million dollars in stocks at that time.

After leaving Oracle, Siebel became CEO of Cayennes Systems, a Palo Alto multimedia company owned by employees. In his new position, Siebel renamed the company as Gain Systems and created an alliance with the database company Sybase. Both companies merged shortly after that. The movement allowed to distribute $ 105 million among the company's 110 employees. Siebel left his post with a small fortune of $ 10 million that would enable him to start his own company.

Career

In July 1993, Thomas Siebel founded Siebel Systems with an idea rejected by Larry Ellison, his mentor and former boss. Siebel wanted to create a tool that allowed companies to manage relationships with their customers. Siebel would be the pioneer of the CRM sector. Siebel started the company with his own money and angel investment.

In 1996, Siebel Systems entered the stock market as a public company. On the first day, the company's shares went from $ 17 to $ 48, reaching a value of $ 700 million. In 2006, Oracle bought the company for $ 5.8 billion.

In 2009, Siebel founded C3 Energy, a software startup to manage public service data. The economic crisis did not help the company take off, as energy companies were not interested in investing in software. Siebel did not have a good time either. An elephant rammed the tycoon, who had to wait two years to recover fully.

In 2016 Thomas Siebel decided to restructure the company. In the process, he had to lay off more than 100 employees. Those who stayed, worked for two years to rewrite the company's software and focus it for the collection and analysis of data generated by sensors and industrial machinery. In this process, C3 became a pioneer in the Internet of Things and obtained significant clients, such as the United States Department of Defense, 3M, and several energy companies.

Books

"Virtual Selling: Going Beyond the Automated Sales Force to Achieve Total Sales Quality", Diana Pub Co, 2019, 948122480

"Taking Care of e-Business: How Today's Market Leaders are Increasing Revenues, Productivity, and Customer Satisfaction", Doubleday Business, 2001. 0385502273

"Cyber Rules: Strategies for Excelling at E-Business", Doubleday Business, 1999, 0385494122

Other facts

Thomas Siebel has received numerous awards as an entrepreneur. Fortune magazine named Siebel Systems as the fastest-growing company in 1999. In 2000, Call Center Magazine included him in the hall of fame for his innovations in CRM. In 2002, he received the David Packard Award for his achievements as a technology entrepreneur. In 2018, EY named Siebel as the entrepreneur of the year in the Technology area.

In 2015, Thomas Siebel founded the Siebel Energy Institute that manages energy data and is associated with several universities in the United States, such as the University of California, Berkeley, and Princeton. The Institute offers grants of $ 25 K to $ 50 K for the development of energy research projects.