Sky Dayton
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
entrepreneur.
Dayton is the founder of EarthLink
EarthLink
EarthLink , is an Internet service provider headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. It claims 1.94 million subscribers.- Business :EarthLink provides a variety of Internet connection types, including dial-up, DSL, satellite, and cable. Both dial-up and high speed Internet access are available...
, co-founder of eCompanies, founder and chairman of Boingo
Boingo Wireless
Boingo Wireless is a public company that provides global Wi-Fi services at more than 125,000 hotspots worldwide – including hundreds of airports, thousands of hotels, and tens of thousand cafes and coffee shops. It was founded by Sky Dayton, who also founded Earthlink.In January 2011, the company...
.
Early life
Dayton's father was a sculptor and his mother a dancer and poet. Shortly after his birth in 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...
, the family moved to Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
. He lived for a time with his maternal grandparents. His grandfather, David DeWitt, was an IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
Research Fellow, and he played a huge part in introducing young Sky to technology and computers.
At the age of 9, Dayton got his first computer, a Sinclair ZX81
Sinclair ZX81
The ZX81 was a home computer produced by Sinclair Research and manufactured in Scotland by Timex Corporation. It was launched in the United Kingdom in March 1981 as the successor to Sinclair's ZX80 and was designed to be a low-cost introduction to home computing for the general public...
. He learned to program in BASIC on this early machine. At age 16, Dayton graduated from The Delphian School
The Delphian School
The Delphian School is a K-12 private school in unincorporated Yamhill County, Oregon, near Sheridan. It is operated by Delphi Schools, using ideas from L. Ron Hubbard from Heron Books. The Study Technology is licensed through the Scientology related group Applied Scholastics. The school building...
, a private boarding school in Oregon, which uses study methods developed by L. Ron Hubbard
L. Ron Hubbard
Lafayette Ronald Hubbard , better known as L. Ron Hubbard , was an American pulp fiction author and religious leader who founded the Church of Scientology...
. He got a job at an entertainment advertising firm, where he became exposed to Apple Macintosh hardware and digital imaging software and soon managed the digital imaging department. He then moved on to a larger advertising agency, Mednick & Associates, where he held a similar role until he was 18.
Entrepreneurial career
In late 1990, at the age of 19, Dayton and a friend raised money from family and friends and opened Mocha Gallery, an art gallery and coffee house in L.A. After 6 months they changed the name to Cafe Mocha and got rid of the art business. The trendy Cafe Mocha was written up in the Los Angeles TimesLos Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, Vogue
Vogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
and GQ magazines and was featured on MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
's "House of Style
House of Style
House of Style is an MTV show that premiered January 1, 1989, focusing on America's growing fascination with the "supermodel" craze. The show focused on fashion, lives of models, the modeling industry, and controversial topics such as eating disorders....
". He and his partner soon took over another coffeehouse called Joe Cafe in Studio City, California.
In 1992, while still managing Cafe Mocha, Dayton and friend Adam Wicks Walker opened Dayton/Walker Design, a Studio City advertising and design firm, in 1992. Dayton/Walker served entertainment clients including Fox Television, Disney, Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
, Sony Pictures, and Warner Brothers.
In 1993, Dayton heard about the Internet. After spending 80 hours trying to get his Macintosh computer to log in, he finally got connected. Realizing that the Internet was likely to become the next mass medium, in 1994 he decided to start EarthLink
EarthLink
EarthLink , is an Internet service provider headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. It claims 1.94 million subscribers.- Business :EarthLink provides a variety of Internet connection types, including dial-up, DSL, satellite, and cable. Both dial-up and high speed Internet access are available...
. He was 23 years old. In search of startup capital, he approached Kevin O'Donnell, father of a childhood friend, and Reed Slatkin
Reed Slatkin
Reed Eliot Slatkin was an initial investor and co-founder of EarthLink and the perpetrator of one of the largest Ponzi schemes in the United States since that conducted by Charles Ponzi himself....
. O'Donnell, Slatkin, and other "angel investor
Angel investor
An angel investor or angel is an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity...
s" put up the initial startup capital and other investors soon followed, including Robert Kavner and Chip Lacy and then larger investors such as George Soros. Dayton described what it was like in the early days in an article in Vanity Fair:
Dayton began in 600 square feet (55.7 m²) of space in an office in Los Angeles. Dayton quickly expanded the company and by the summer of 1995 EarthLink was able to provide national service enabled by its agreement with UUNET
UUNET
UUNET founded in 1987, was one of the largest Internet service providers and one of the nine Tier 1 networks. It was based in Northern Virginia and was the first commercial Internet service provider...
. In 1996 Dayton moved from founding CEO to executive chairman, handing over day-to-day operations of the company to Charles "Garry" Betty. At the time, the company was growing at a rate of 5 percent to 10 percent a week. A long-time Mac user, in 1998, Dayton lead the creation of a strategic partnership with Steve Jobs at Apple that saw EarthLink become the default ISP preloaded on iMac, and later lead to a $200M investment by Apple into the company.
EarthLink grew to become one of the nation's leading Internet service providers, with millions of customers and over $1 billion in annual revenue.
In June 1999, Dayton became non-executive chairman of EarthLink and announced the formation of eCompanies with former Disney Internet chief Jake Winebaum. eCompanies began as an incubator
Business incubator
Business incubators are programs designed to accelerate the successful development of entrepreneurial companies through an array of business support resources and services, developed and orchestrated by incubator management and offered both in the incubator and through its network of contacts...
and venture capital
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
fund for developing Internet companies. It is a privately held company, and while it reportedly struggled for a time (as did most Internet companies in 2000), it ultimately launched several successful companies, including LowerMyBills.com
LowerMyBills.com
LowerMyBills.com is a consumer finance corporate Web site, owned by Experian, that connects prospective mortgage borrowers to lenders. It was founded by Matt Coffin in 1999. It is well-known for its banner ads, which generally include bizarre or nonsensical animations or soundless video clips...
, which was purchased by Experian in 2005 for $380M, JAMDAT Mobile, which went public and was then purchased by Electronic Arts in 2005 for $680 million, and Business.com
Business.com
Business.com is a business search engine and web directory and pay per click advertising network. It includes Work.com, a business-to-business community publishing platform where experts share advice on common business topics in the form of how-to guides....
(the domain for which Dayton and Winebaum bought for $7.5M during the height of the dot com bubble), which was purchased by RH Donnelly in 2007 for $345 million.
Dayton started Boingo Wireless in 2001 to solve the fragmentation problem inherent in Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi or Wifi, is a mechanism for wirelessly connecting electronic devices. A device enabled with Wi-Fi, such as a personal computer, video game console, smartphone, or digital audio player, can connect to the Internet via a wireless network access point. An access point has a range of about 20...
networks. Boingo aggregates hundreds of thousands of Wi-Fi “hot spots” around the globe into a single system for consumers and it has grown into one of the largest Wi-Fi operators in the world. Dayton serves as Boingo's chairman. Boingo filed to go public in January, 2011, listing Dayton as owning 15%.
On May 4th, 2011, Boingo Wireless went public selling 5,770,000 shares at $13.50, raising $77.9 million. Of the shares sold in the offering, the company sold 3,846,800 shares and selling stockholders 1,923,200 shares. After the offering, the company has 32.5 million shares out, giving the company a market cap of around $439 million on the offering…and less now.
Dayton became CEO of Helio upon the company’s launch in 2005. At that time, he resigned as chairman of EarthLink but remained a director. In January 2008 he was appointed Chairman of Helio's Board of Directors for the months leading up to Helio's sale. Helio was acquired by Virgin Mobile USA in 2008.
Other activities and awards
Dayton serves on the advisory board of the Center for Public LeadershipCenter for Public Leadership
The Center for Public Leadership is an American learning institution that provides teaching, research and training in the practical skills of leadership for people in government, nonprofits, and business. It was established in 2000, through a gift from the Wexner Foundation, at Harvard Kennedy...
at the John F. Kennedy School of Government
John F. Kennedy School of Government
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University is a public policy and public administration school, and one of Harvard's graduate and professional schools...
at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
.
He was chosen as Entrepreneur of the Year by the Lloyd Greif Center at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business. He is a recipient of the Dream Keeper award from the I Have a Dream Foundation and in 1999 he was named to the MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
Technology Review
Technology Review
Technology Review is a magazine published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was founded in 1899 as "The Technology Review", and was re-launched without the "The" in its name on April 23, 1998 under then publisher R. Bruce Journey...
TR100
TR35
The TR35 is an annual list published by MIT Technology Review magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35.Some of the most famous winners of the award include Larry Page and Sergey Brin , Linus Torvalds , Jerry Yang , Jonathan Ive , Mark Zuckerberg...
as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.
Family and leisure
In 1998 Dayton began taking surfing lessons and quickly fell for the sport. His love for surfing is often featured in articles about him and his businesses.Dayton is the great grandson of politician, industrialist and poet, Sam DeWitt
Sam DeWitt
Samuel Aaron "Sam" DeWitt was a businessman, poet, playwright, and politician. He is best remembered as a New York State Legislator who represented Bronx's 7th district from 1919 until his expulsion from the Assembly in 1920....
.
Dayton is married to novelist Arwen Elys Dayton. They are Scientologists
Scientology
Scientology is a body of beliefs and related practices created by science fiction and fantasy author L. Ron Hubbard , starting in 1952, as a successor to his earlier self-help system, Dianetics...
and they have three children.
Interviews
- Connecting, Interview with Sky Dayton (2010) LA Business Journal
- This Week In Start-Ups (2010) with Jason CalacanisJason CalacanisJason McCabe Calacanis is an American Internet entrepreneur and blogger. His first company was part of the dot-com era in New York, and his second venture, Weblogs, Inc., capitalized on the growth of blogs before being sold to AOL....
- Sultans of Surf (2007) Outside Go Magazine
- Q&A with Sky Dayton (2006) Business Week
- Q&A with Sky Dayton (2004) Business Week
- Dueling CEOs talk Wi-Fi (2003) Business Week
Speeches and Writings
- When Capital Corrupts Forbes (2002)
- Education in the Internet Age Speech at Hillsdale CollegeHillsdale CollegeHillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, United States, is a co-educational liberal arts college known for being the first American college to prohibit in its charter all discrimination based on race, religion, or sex; its refusal of government funding; and its monthly publication, Imprimis...
(2003) published in Imprimis - Lighting the Way EarthLink bLink Magazine (2001)
External links
- Sky Dayton's home page
- Sky Dayton's blog
- Sky Dayton's posterous
- Helio
- Boingo
- eCompanies
- Sky Dayton on Twitter
- Sky Dayton's YouTube channel
- Sky Dayton — Libertarian from Advocates for Self-Government website