A very powerful management team! SAN FRANCISCO – June 26, 2003 – HandHeld Entertainment today announced it has hired Nathan M. Schulhof as president and chief executive officer. Schulhof is credited as the inventor of the MP3 player and holds several U.S. patents.
“Nathan Schulhof is uniquely qualified to lead HandHeld Entertainment to the forefront of the portable electronic entertainment industry,” said Geoffrey Mulligan, 22-year veteran of the software entertainment industry and chairman of the board of HandHeld Entertainment. “He is a technology visionary and has demonstrated time and again that he knows what it takes to make a business truly profitable. Under his leadership, HandHeld Entertainment is now positioned to become not just a successful company but also an industry leader.”
Schulhof’s credentials include more than 35 years as a serial entrepreneur. Prior to joining HandHeld Entertainment, he headed numerous technology and consulting businesses. As co-founder of Information Highway Media Corp. in the early 1990s (later renamed Audio Highway and then audiohighway.com), Schulhof lead the organization in introducing the Listen Up Player at the January 1997 Consumer Electronics Show, where it won an Innovations award and later garnered the People’s Choice award from the Upside Magazine/David Coursey Internet Showcase conference in 1998. He also took audiohighway.com public on the Nasdaq Stock Market in 1998.
Additionally, Schulhof co-founded TestDrive Co., a pioneer in the distribution of encrypted software on CD-ROMs, a company that was acquired 14 months after its creation by R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co., and he served as CEO of Silicon Valley Systems, as well as Jasmine Systems. He also ran an air charter service in the 1970s. More recently, he was a founding partner of GoldPine Partners, a consulting and investment firm that focuses on providing technology and biotechnology companies with services in conducting mergers and acquisitions, forming strategic partnerships and more.
“HandHeld Entertainment will ship this Christmas season something the consumer electronics market that has never been seen before – a high-quality portable video player priced at under $100, a price that will make it affordable to nearly everyone,” Schulhof said. “I am very pleased to be involved with this company, and I believe very strongly that what we have here will open a new chapter in the history of portable electronic entertainment.”
Schulhof is joined at HandHeld by Carl Page as chief technical officer, Eric Hamilton as principal scientist and Garrett Cecchini as executive vice president and general counsel.
Prior to co-founding HandHeld Entertainment, Page was a co-founder of eGroups (later acquired by Yahoo! as Yahoo! Groups) and was one of the early shareholders of Google. Hamilton is generally credited with being one of the top compression scientists in the world, having chaired the International JPEG Committee for three years. Prior to co-founding HandHeld Entertainment, Cecchini was a founding shareholder in three successful tech start-ups, as well as a practicing lawyer for 23 years.
“Not only has the development team done an incredible job of creating very powerful technologies that I believe will help HandHeld dominate the personal video player marketplace, but the team that’s been assembled is amazing,” Schulhof said. “I’m talking about expertise that ranges from one of the co-founding shareholders of Google to the former chairman of the International JPEG Committee and beyond. And in each instance, these market leaders personally invested in the company, which made it even easier for me to accept this position.”
About HandHeld Entertainment HandHeld Entertainment was formally created in February 2003 in order to fill the gap in the portable electronic entertainment industry left open by the absence of affordable full-color handheld digital audio/video players. Lead by an experienced team of seasoned professionals, HandHeld Electronics is on track to become the foremost provider of digital audio/video media content and the hardware necessary to view it.
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