Today we’d like to introduce you to Kenneth Frank.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Kenneth. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
As my story will show you, I’m an engineer at heart. I started my career in 1983 as an intern at AT&T Bell Laboratories while I was still a sophomore in high school. I worked on a variety of assignments from speech recognition, to graphical displays to packet switching in traditional telecommunications switches.
After graduating with Computer Science degrees from USC and Stanford University, I started working with AT&T Bell Laboratories full-time in 1989. The variety of assignments early in my career coupled with my curiosity and ambition is what enabled me to build breadth in technology, functional disciplines and different organizational cultures. Building that kind of experience early in your career is vital, and allows you to leverage it (almost instinctively) later on in your career.
After years at AT&T on the equipment manufacturing side of telecommunications, I transitioned to BellSouth in Atlanta, Ga – a regional telephone operator at the time – where I supported their entry into the data services business and eventually played a significant role in the launch of their consumer ADSL services.
I’ve had varying career shifts – all with the common theme of pushing myself to do something very different. After working at Bellsouth and helping launch consumer DSL, I transitioned to serve as part of the founding management team for a VC-backed start-up called Broadband Office which laid fiber optics into Class A office properties. After that I made the big move to Dallas, to serve as the chief technology officer of Alcatel where we designed and deployed U-verse for AT&T. During my time at Alcatel, I transitioned to Paris, France for five years where I was president of global solutions and marketing for Alcatel-Lucent. I also led a joint venture with Reliance Industries and Alcatel in Mumbai, India before transitioning to the role of COO at Vista equity partners- backed Aptean. This led me to my current role as CEO of Kibo Software – the merger of five leading players in the retail eCommerce.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There were definite struggles along the way – all of which have been tremendous learning experiences. The one that stands out the most was the experience I had with Broadband Office in the late ‘90s. It was my first experience outside of a large, corporate environment and it forced me to operate very differently than how I was previously trained. We grew the company from seven original employees to over 800; we turned down a multi-billion dollar offer from a large service provider during the height of the tech boom; and we scaled the company across three continents.
We finally succumbed to the tech bust in 2001, when we filed bankruptcy and eventually sold the company and its assets to Masergy Communications.
Having lived through that difficult time was the most significant learning experience in my career. You realize you must pay attention to details you may have ignored previously, you assess risks no matter how much optimism you encounter with stakeholders or the jubilant environment. You engage your team and learn to be very transparent – because they are loyal to you and you need to ensure their loyalty doesn’t blind them from their responsibilities to their families, etc.
Kibo – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Named after the tallest peak in Mount Kilimanjaro, Kibo enables customers to reach higher peaks of sales and customer loyalty. As a leading omnichannel commerce platform for retailers and branded manufacturers with over 800 customers fulfilling orders in 75 countries, we empower our clients to achieve optimal performance and loyalty through truly connected customer experiences across customer devices and retail touch points. Kibo’s unified approach includes a leading eCommerce platform, big data 1:1 personalization, mobile POS, and distributed order management delivered via a modern, cloud-based infrastructure. The Kibo platform can scale as clients grow their business while maintaining a low cost of ownership and faster time to market than other solutions.
The key is that Kibo offers an integrated suite of critical e-commerce solutions retailers require to respond to the complex and competitive environment they find themselves in.
Without Kibo, retailers would be required to work with 3-4 different technology partners which impacts their ability to move quickly and forces them to coordinate between disparate technologies.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
I’m most proud of the team. The company was built through integration of five different companies and we’ve had to honor the prior five cultures but embrace a brand new one – Kibo! It’s not easy, but I love to see the emergence of a new brand and doing new things with a renewed attitude.
Contact Info:
- Address: KPMG Centre, 717 N Harwood St, Dallas, TX 75201
- Website: https://kibocommerce.com/
- Phone: (877) 350-3866
- Email: info@kibocommerce.com
- Twitter: @KiboCommerce
Image Credit:
Kibo Staff
