The New York Times
Robert Johnson
Published: February 27, 2005
With the ink barely dry on the contract for his latest entrepreneurial success, Philippe Kahn is speeding toward his next professional endeavor, as well as racing in his leisure time.
Mr. Kahn, 52, recently agreed to sell LightSurf Technologies – a Santa Cruz, Calif., company that has been a pioneer in cellphone photography – to VeriSign, a provider of telecommunications and Internet services based in Mountain View, Calif. He will get about $125 million worth of VeriSign shares from the $270 million stock transaction, which was announced in January.
For Mr. Kahn, a former high school math teacher, it will not be the first sale of a company he built. Motorola bought his first company, Starfish Software, for $258 million in 1998; about half of that amount went to Mr. Kahn himself.
Still, it seems that the chase interests him most. In addition to serving as LightSurf’s chairman, and making time for his passion for competitive sailing, he has already founded another company, Fullpower Technologies, a wireless communication enterprise that he has declined to discuss in detail.
Even as he waits for the LightSurf sale to close, his schedule is full.
“I wake up at 7 a.m. and have a high-intensity workout at 7:30,” he said. “I alternate my days between rowing and Olympic lifting. One day each, followed by stretching. Then breakfast and up to business. I take a break for two hours in the early afternoon to go train on the water, sailing small boats competitively. Then back to work.”
In what is left of his spare time, he and his wife, Sonia Lee, are raising six children. That, he said, means a discipline of “no television and in bed by midnight” every night. The couple also devotes money and time to their Lee-Kahn Foundation, which supports causes like protecting endangered wildlife and encouraging the arts through the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz.
Mr. Kahn said he routinely interrupted his nightly sleep for a brief stint of business. “I wake up at 4 a.m. and give it 45 minutes to catch up with e-mail and the world,” he said. Yet it usually seems as if it’s the rest of the world that has some catching up to do with him. Robert Johnson