BOB BARKER

Bob Barker is a veteran technology executive with C-level experience in large companies and startups. This rare combination provides unique insight and brings significant strategic partnership acumen and business development expertise. Over a 30-year career, he has negotiated and implemented multiple partnerships with major industry players, resulting in new products that drove multi-million dollar increases in revenue. He has also led multiple acquisitions for a large software company, including a $200M+ transaction, the largest in company history.

Barker is a Senior Executive Partner for SOLIDexecutive, Inc. and the founder of 20/20 Outlook, LLC, through which he serves as strategic adviser to CEOs on creating a vision for growth; developing business and technology partnerships that lead to mergers and acquisitions; strategizing for corporate and product positioning; and refining marketing and social media strategy. He is an active blogger and contributes content for several online publications.

His passion is helping small- and medium-sized businesses reach their full potential. He works with the CEO and management team to define a realistic exit strategy; align sales, marketing, and engineering efforts with the strategy; and develop strategic partnerships that increase revenue, profit, and the value of the company to potential acquirers.

As Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for Infoglide Software, Barker set the strategic marketing direction for the Austin software company, including business development, strategic alliances, public relations, and marketing communications. He also founded the corporate blog, IdentityResolutionDaily, serving as editor and frequent contributor.

Barker formerly served as Corporate Vice President of Strategic Planning for Compuware Corporation, where he was responsible for product and technology strategy and direction for the $1.2 billion software and services company. Under his leadership, the company increased mindshare for 100+ products in seven families that generated over $700M in annual product revenue. He also led a partnership effort that resulted in simultaneous announcements with Microsoft Corporation and the Eclipse Foundation.

Prior to Compuware, Barker was an Entrepreneur in Residence with STARTech Early Ventures, where he evaluated software startups and participated in seed investment decisions, drawing on his senior management experience at high-tech startups in Austin, Dallas, and Boston.

Before STARTech, he was Group Vice President of Business Development for Sterling Commerce, where he led U.S. and European acquisition and partnership initiatives for Sterling's Dallas-based Communications Group.

Barker's career also includes a number of years as the Corporate VP of Strategic Relations at Novell. There he developed and managed partnerships with the most influential companies in the technology industry, including negotiating a partnership with Compaq that funded multi-million dollar joint sales programs. He also closed technology and marketing partnerships with Lotus Notes and CA-Unicenter that created new markets for Novell products. He began his career at two Austin-based pioneering software companies, MRI and Execucom.

Barker holds a Bachelor of Arts with honors from The University of Texas at Austin with a major in psychology and a minor in mathematics. He completed the first year of his Ph.D. in psychology at Princeton University before joining the software industry. Barker has served on the organizing committee for the IEEE International Engineering Management Conference, and he currently serves as an advisor for the Center for Lifelong Engineering Education at the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.

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