Mike Ramsay, Co-founder of TiVO

You can thank Mike for the fact that you haven't seen a TV commercial in six months. Mike left a cushy job at SGI to form TiVO, which revolutionized the way people watched TV by creating the first ever Digital Video Recorder.


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We spoke to Mike Ramsay who founded TiVo along with former Silicon Graphics veteran Jim Barton. TiVo pioneered the digital video recorder when it shipped its first unit in March of 1999 and went on to establish one of the most rapid adoption rates in the history of consumer electronics on its way to an IPO only 6 months later.

In this interview Mike shares with us unique insights into the history of TiVo and the essence of what it’s like to introduce and market a disruptive technology. He also talks about what he sees in the future for TiVo and adds some more color around issues such as TiVo search that John Battelle has written about and on partnership deals in the past and future as Thomas Hawk and Om Malik have commented on.

The revolutionary nature of TiVo won it an Emmy award and made the product into a verb. So join us as we learn what it takes to launch a product for which 98% of users say they couldn’t live without!

For more, check out this great engadget interview with Mike, and for some laughs check out this ad to learn about how TiVo was invented by aliens.

- JULIO.

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