Joe Mohen
Encyclopedia
Joseph T. Mohen, better known as Joe Mohen, (born July 19, 1956) was the CEO and co-founder of election.com, which ran the Arizona Democratic Primary in March 2000, the world’s first legally binding election conducted on the Internet, according to the company. He was also the founder of SpiralFrog
, an ad-supported music download service, which closed in March 2009.
borough of Queens
, the oldest of twelve children of Joseph Conrad Mohen (born 1935) and Virginia Ann Mohen (born 1935), both descendents of Irish Immigrants. In 1960, when he was four, the family moved to Garden City
on Long Island
. There he attended a local Catholic School, St. Anne’s, and later an Episcopal Preparatory School, St. Paul’s. He later attended Johns Hopkins University
in Baltimore, and Manhattan College
in New York City.
of which he served as CEO until September 1996, and remained a Chairman through 1998. In 1987, Proginet created a complex software package called XCOM, which sold in 1992 to a predecessor company of Computer Associates, and was one of the software products to span more than a eleven computer operating systems. The renamed CA-XCOM is still sold by Computer Associates today. As CEO, Mohen secured equity stakes from both Novell
and Microsoft
in Proginet; Proginet was later acquired by Tipco. Mohen also was a contributing editor and columnist for PC Week (now eWeek), Data Communications Magazine, and Network World.; in 1989, he wrote a widely quoted article, called "Seeking a Cure for the Vaporware
Epidemic", writing "my own estimate is that at the time of announcement, 10% of software products don't actually exist ... Vendors that are unwilling to [prove it exists] shouldn't announce their packages to the press", blaming the press the press for not investigating claims by developers, saying "If the pharmaceutical industry were this careless, I could announce a cure for cancer today — to a believing press."
Mohen is best known for co-founding election.com, with which in 1999 he was able to recruit Jack Kemp
and former Irish Taoiseach
(i.e. Prime Minister) Garret FitzGerald
to the board. elecion.com [sic] is best known for administering the 2000 Arizona Democratic presidential primary Internet election. The company, originally called Votation.com, was started in part with equity investments from VeriSign
and Accenture
. In February election.com acquired NewVoter.com with then internet entrepreneur and civil rights advocate Mark Strama
(who was subsequently elected to the Texas State legislature in 2004), who joined election.com as Vice President. Mohen stepped down as CEO of election.com in 2001. Two years after Mohen left, the public sector elections business of election.com was acquired by Accenture
.
Mohen started SpiralFrog, Inc. in an effort to create a market driven solution to digital music piracy. In 2004, a focus group in New York City was held to determine how to solve the problem of young people stealing music. One of the attendees in the focus group responded “Why don’t you just give away the music”….and show advertising during the downloads. Most doubted the four major record labels would ever go along with the idea, especially the largest music company - Universal Music Group
, Mohen set out to recruit directors from music and advertising to obtain the needed licenses. Among those recruited included former CEOs Jay Bernman (IFPI), Frances Preston (BMI), and Robin Kent (Interpublic Universal McCann). Finally, on August 28, 2006, the Financial Times reported in its lead story, that it had granted SpiralFrog the first ever license to give away its complete catalog of music to consumers for free, in return for a share of the advertising revenues.
However, the launch of SpiralFrog was delayed, due to technical and licensing delays, and an internal control fight. Robin Kent, the British advertising executive who had been recruited by Mohen the year before, attempted a spectacular corporate takeover in December 2006, which was widely reported in the press. Mohen emerged the winner in what was later known as the "Boxing Day Massacre", but most industry observers believed that SpiralFrog.com would never launch. Mohen continued to insist that he would overcome these obstacles and launch the site. Mohen went on to sign all remaining major music publishers, and performing rights societies, financed the company with exchangeable debt, and SprialFrog.com finally launched on September 17, 2007.
In June 2008, Mohen concluded an agreement with the British music company EMI
, whose catalog was added to SpiralFrog prior to the ColdPlay
Viva La Vida tour. The web site grew to three million songs available.
However the collapse of the stock market in September 2008, and the ensuing credit crisis, combined with contraction of the advertising markets, left SpiralFrog unable to meet its collateralized note agreements. SpiralFrog was particularly vulnerable to the credit crisis because it was debt financed as opposed to equity financed, and its backers were hedge funds who were themselves facing huge redemptions. Its loans were called and SpiralFrog was forced to close.
Blue Ribbon Commission on Corporate Governance. Mohen was also selected to speak onstage with Microsoft
CEO Steve Ballmer
when Microsoft announced that it had broken the previous record for the TPS benchmark for scalable systems in September 2000.
Mohen is the active in the charity organized by Major League Baseball
for keeping minority and underprivileged youth active in sports. He administrates the Long Island, New York, chapter of Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI), through Garden City Bombers Baseball non-profit organization, of which is he one of the founders; this organizations combines young people from minority and affluent neighborhoods on the same baseball teams, and combines the teaching of baseball skills, with academic support, and other life lessons. In 2006 and 2007, he organized a number of baseball tournaments in the Dominican Republic, and in July 2010 he helped organize the first Governor's tee ball game at the Executive Mansion in Albany, New York.
Spiralfrog
SpiralFrog was a music download service based in New York that launched in the United States and Canada on September 17, 2007. SpiralFrog offered free and legal music downloads, all supported by advertising, and was the largest site of its kind in North America...
, an ad-supported music download service, which closed in March 2009.
Early life and childhood
Mohen was born in the New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
borough of Queens
Queens
Queens is the easternmost of the five boroughs of New York City. The largest borough in area and the second-largest in population, it is coextensive with Queens County, an administrative division of New York state, in the United States....
, the oldest of twelve children of Joseph Conrad Mohen (born 1935) and Virginia Ann Mohen (born 1935), both descendents of Irish Immigrants. In 1960, when he was four, the family moved to Garden City
Garden City, New York
Garden City is a village in the town of Hempstead in central Nassau County, New York, in the United States. It was founded by multi-millionaire Alexander Turney Stewart in 1869, and is located on Long Island, to the east of New York City, from mid-town Manhattan, and just south of the town of...
on Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
. There he attended a local Catholic School, St. Anne’s, and later an Episcopal Preparatory School, St. Paul’s. He later attended Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...
in Baltimore, and Manhattan College
Manhattan College
Manhattan College is a Roman Catholic liberal arts college in the Lasallian tradition in New York City, United States. Despite the college's name, it is no longer located in Manhattan but in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, roughly 10 miles north of Midtown. Manhattan College offers...
in New York City.
Early career
Mohen founded Proginet CorporationProginet
-History:Proginet Corporation, which was acquired by Tibco Software in 2010, was a systems management software company. It is best known for having developed a breakthrough product in the late 1980s called XCOM, which allowed companies to manage the process of moving bulk data between 26 different...
of which he served as CEO until September 1996, and remained a Chairman through 1998. In 1987, Proginet created a complex software package called XCOM, which sold in 1992 to a predecessor company of Computer Associates, and was one of the software products to span more than a eleven computer operating systems. The renamed CA-XCOM is still sold by Computer Associates today. As CEO, Mohen secured equity stakes from both Novell
Novell
Novell, Inc. is a multinational software and services company. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group. It specializes in network operating systems, such as Novell NetWare; systems management solutions, such as Novell ZENworks; and collaboration solutions, such as Novell Groupwise...
and Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
in Proginet; Proginet was later acquired by Tipco. Mohen also was a contributing editor and columnist for PC Week (now eWeek), Data Communications Magazine, and Network World.; in 1989, he wrote a widely quoted article, called "Seeking a Cure for the Vaporware
Vaporware
Vaporware is a term in the computer industry that describes a product, typically computer hardware or software, that is announced to the general public but is never actually released nor officially canceled. Vaporware is also a term sometimes used to describe events that are announced or predicted,...
Epidemic", writing "my own estimate is that at the time of announcement, 10% of software products don't actually exist ... Vendors that are unwilling to [prove it exists] shouldn't announce their packages to the press", blaming the press the press for not investigating claims by developers, saying "If the pharmaceutical industry were this careless, I could announce a cure for cancer today — to a believing press."
election.com
Jack Kemp
Jack French Kemp was an American politician and a collegiate and professional football player. A Republican, he served as Housing Secretary in the administration of President George H. W. Bush from 1989 to 1993, having previously served nine terms as a congressman for Western New York's 31st...
and former Irish Taoiseach
Taoiseach
The Taoiseach is the head of government or prime minister of Ireland. The Taoiseach is appointed by the President upon the nomination of Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Oireachtas , and must, in order to remain in office, retain the support of a majority in the Dáil.The current Taoiseach is...
(i.e. Prime Minister) Garret FitzGerald
Garret FitzGerald
Garret FitzGerald was an Irish politician who was twice Taoiseach of Ireland, serving in office from July 1981 to February 1982 and again from December 1982 to March 1987. FitzGerald was elected to Seanad Éireann in 1965 and was subsequently elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fine Gael TD in 1969. He...
to the board. elecion.com [sic] is best known for administering the 2000 Arizona Democratic presidential primary Internet election. The company, originally called Votation.com, was started in part with equity investments from VeriSign
VeriSign
Verisign, Inc. is an American company based in Dulles, Virginia that operates a diverse array of network infrastructure, including two of the Internet's thirteen root nameservers, the authoritative registry for the .com, .net, and .name generic top-level domains and the .cc and .tv country-code...
and Accenture
Accenture
Accenture plc is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company headquartered in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. It is the largest consulting firm in the world and is a Fortune Global 500 company. As of September 2011, the company had more than 236,000 employees across...
. In February election.com acquired NewVoter.com with then internet entrepreneur and civil rights advocate Mark Strama
Mark Strama
Thomas Mark Strama is a Democratic member of the Texas House of Representatives, representing the 50th District since his election in 2004...
(who was subsequently elected to the Texas State legislature in 2004), who joined election.com as Vice President. Mohen stepped down as CEO of election.com in 2001. Two years after Mohen left, the public sector elections business of election.com was acquired by Accenture
Accenture
Accenture plc is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company headquartered in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. It is the largest consulting firm in the world and is a Fortune Global 500 company. As of September 2011, the company had more than 236,000 employees across...
.
Automating Catholic Church finance
In late 2001, Mohen founded ParishPay, which automated handling of money for churches around the United States. The company replaced the envelop system, whereby donations were placed into envelops each Sabbath, with a system in which parish members could have their donations automatically debited from their bank or credit card accounts each month. Shortly after its launch, the system was featured in a front page story in the New York Times, after signing the Catholic Dioceses of Chicago, San Jose, and Orlando, and ParishPay received Venture Capital financing in late 2002. Mohen sold his interest In ParishPay to start SpiralFrog, although ParishPay grew substantially and was later merged with SmartTuition.Digital music and SpiralFrog
Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group is an American music group, the largest of the "big four" record companies by its commanding market share and its multitude of global operations...
, Mohen set out to recruit directors from music and advertising to obtain the needed licenses. Among those recruited included former CEOs Jay Bernman (IFPI), Frances Preston (BMI), and Robin Kent (Interpublic Universal McCann). Finally, on August 28, 2006, the Financial Times reported in its lead story, that it had granted SpiralFrog the first ever license to give away its complete catalog of music to consumers for free, in return for a share of the advertising revenues.
However, the launch of SpiralFrog was delayed, due to technical and licensing delays, and an internal control fight. Robin Kent, the British advertising executive who had been recruited by Mohen the year before, attempted a spectacular corporate takeover in December 2006, which was widely reported in the press. Mohen emerged the winner in what was later known as the "Boxing Day Massacre", but most industry observers believed that SpiralFrog.com would never launch. Mohen continued to insist that he would overcome these obstacles and launch the site. Mohen went on to sign all remaining major music publishers, and performing rights societies, financed the company with exchangeable debt, and SprialFrog.com finally launched on September 17, 2007.
In June 2008, Mohen concluded an agreement with the British music company EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
, whose catalog was added to SpiralFrog prior to the ColdPlay
Coldplay
Coldplay are a British alternative rock band formed in 1996 by lead vocalist Chris Martin and lead guitarist Jonny Buckland at University College London. After they formed Pectoralz, Guy Berryman joined the group as a bassist and they changed their name to Starfish. Will Champion joined as a...
Viva La Vida tour. The web site grew to three million songs available.
However the collapse of the stock market in September 2008, and the ensuing credit crisis, combined with contraction of the advertising markets, left SpiralFrog unable to meet its collateralized note agreements. SpiralFrog was particularly vulnerable to the credit crisis because it was debt financed as opposed to equity financed, and its backers were hedge funds who were themselves facing huge redemptions. Its loans were called and SpiralFrog was forced to close.
Awards and miscellaneous
In June of 2011, the Montreal based technology accelerator program, FounderFuel, selected Mohen among its Entreprenuer Mentors, along with David Cancel, David Hauser, and Jean-Sebastien Cournoyer, among others. Mohen has accepted Awards at the Long Island Software Awards in 1997, 2000, and 2008. He also gave the keynote address at the Interop Conference in Washington in 1993, and an address to the South African Technology leadership in Pretoria in 1990 on transition after Apartheid. He is a former member of the National Association of Corporate DirectorsNational Association of Corporate Directors
The National Association of Corporate Directors is an independent, not-for-profit membership organization, dedicated to serving the corporate governance needs of directors of public, private, and non-profit organizations. Founded in 1977, NACD is headquartered in Washington, D.C. and serves...
Blue Ribbon Commission on Corporate Governance. Mohen was also selected to speak onstage with Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
CEO Steve Ballmer
Steve Ballmer
Steven Anthony "Steve" Ballmer is an American business magnate. He is the chief executive officer of Microsoft, having held that post since January 2000. , his personal wealth is estimated at US$13.9 billion, ranking number 19 on the Forbes 400.-Early life:Ballmer was born in Detroit, Michigan to...
when Microsoft announced that it had broken the previous record for the TPS benchmark for scalable systems in September 2000.
Mohen is the active in the charity organized by Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball is the highest level of professional baseball in the United States and Canada, consisting of teams that play in the National League and the American League...
for keeping minority and underprivileged youth active in sports. He administrates the Long Island, New York, chapter of Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI), through Garden City Bombers Baseball non-profit organization, of which is he one of the founders; this organizations combines young people from minority and affluent neighborhoods on the same baseball teams, and combines the teaching of baseball skills, with academic support, and other life lessons. In 2006 and 2007, he organized a number of baseball tournaments in the Dominican Republic, and in July 2010 he helped organize the first Governor's tee ball game at the Executive Mansion in Albany, New York.