James Alexander found great value in getting an MBA even after launching a couple of companies
Many people automatically associate the intersection of innovation and formal education with places such as Boston, Silicon Valley or Austin, Texas. If you are one of those people, you might want to think again. There is significant entrepreneurial activity taking place not only at other institutions in America, but “across the pond” as well.
Perhaps no one knows this better than James Alexander, a 43-year old serial entrepreneur and 2007 Executive MBA graduate of Said Business School at the University of Oxford in England. In 1995, he co-founded eWatch, the first-ever social media monitoring service. The company was acquired by PR Newswire in 1999.
Since the sale of his first company, Alexander has served as the CEO of a second startup and the general manager of a third, the latter of which was acquired by Getty Images in 2009. He also did a seven-year stint at Adobe as its director of product management just prior to attending Oxford, where he earned an MBA with distinction. As if that were not enough, he has been awarded 12 patents to boot.
Today, he is the founder and CEO of Vizibility, a company that he started in 2009 to help professionals promote their online identities. More than 30,000 people use the company’s digital business card to make an accurate, powerful and lasting impressions on their customers and clients.
My Story
The need for Vizibility became clear in 2009 when I discovered that I could not find myself online. As a guy with two first names, it became obvious to me that millions of professionals might have their livelihoods impacted by poor placement in Google search results.
Let’s face it, we are who Google says we are. So missing or inaccurate search results can quickly leave the wrong impression…or worse, leave no impression at all. The online reputation management services at the time were (and still are) focused on helping people with negative search results. Here I was with great search results that nobody could find. I saw a huge opportunity.
Vizibility delivers a digital business card enabling people to package and promote their professional online presence. The digital business card is mobile optimized for smart phones and can be easily shared with a QR code, Android Beam, Apple’s Passbook, SMS or links.
Tens of thousands of professionals are using Vizibility to create a powerful, accurate and lasting impression. The service is typically purchased by companies on an annual subscription and given to all their staff with printed business cards. Subscriptions start as low as USD $1,999 for up to 500 users. Vizibility has been awarded seven patents with five additional patents pending.
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