Daniel Cane This is Me

Education

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1. 1. www.palmbeachpost.com

   www.palmbeachpost.com/business - [Cached]

   Published on: 7/14/2008   Last Visited: 7/14/2008

   Reinventing himself: Dan Cane, who made life easy for professors, now aims at Web users
   ...
   Dan Cane, president of the Lake Worth class of '94, and a co-founder of Blackboard, the Internet software company.He now owns a company in Delray Beach called Kadoo.
   
   Bob Shanley/The Post
   
   enlarge
   
   Working from an office in downtown Delray that could easily be described as unconventional, software developer Dan Cane is creating a new all-in-one social-networking site called Kadoo.
   
   Bob Shanley/The Post
   ...
   As you walk through Dan Cane's purple door, you are confronted by two murals, one featuring lions and tigers, the other zebras and plenty of flora.
   
   These are the offices of Kadoo Inc., and the splash of vibrant colors suits its founder.
   
   'I've got Wild Kingdom going on in here,' he says.
   
   The oddball digs in Delray Beach set Kadoo apart from most plain-Jane offices of the typical start-up firm with little money and dubious prospects.Then again, Kadoo is no ordinary start-up, and Cane is the reason.Rarely do South Florida high-tech newbies have a boss with such a stunning track record at such a young age.
   
   Cane, 31, is co-founder of Blackboard Inc., a billion-dollar outfit and the darling of the Washington, D.C., high-tech community.It sells course-management software to just about every college in the country.
   
   Ten years ago, it was made up of Cane, a couple of equally young entrepreneurs and a handful of Cane's buddies from Cornell University.Today, it employs 890 people and has offices around the world.
   
   'He's the kind of entrepreneur that you want around.You know he's going to succeed,' said Jane Teague, president of the Enterprise Development Corp. of South Florida. 'You don't have that many people who have done this before.'
   
   Cane is contagiously cheerful and relaxed in cargo shorts, Nike T-shirt and flip-flops.
   
   His only concession to success is a gold Raymond Weil watch with a classical white face and Roman numerals.
   
   Cane, who grew up in Lake Worth, is the son of a law professor and a medical doctor.
   
   He attended a Jewish community day school as a youngster and in 1994 became senior class president at Lake Worth High School.Today, he lives in Boynton Beach with his wife, Debra, and three children, ages 1, 2 and 4.
   
   A classroom innovation
   
   He studied economics, not computer engineering, at Cornell.
   
   But he had already begun to play around with Mosaic, the text-based pre-Web version of the Internet used mainly by academics and students, before graduating to HTML and the World Wide Web.
   
   In independent study, Cane would meet with his statistics professor, Cindy Van Es, once a week and discuss his ideas for Web tools for her class, and she would steer him in the direction of what teachers need.
   
   'We were spending too much time handing out documents and picking up assignments, and I thought, 'There's got to be a better way,' ' Cane remembers.
   
   Ultimately, he created three Web tools for Van Es to make class announcements, give quizzes and conduct student surveys.
   
   It was called the Teacher's Toolbox.Soon, other professors were asking for Cane's software program.
   
   'I think he was doing it for the experience of it, and he added to a skill that changed his career,' said Van Es, who is still at Cornell. 'It turned out to be a great business.'
   
   First firm formed in 1996
   
   Cane formed a small company in 1996 while in school, but it would be his meeting Matt Pittinsky and Michael Chasen, two young entrepreneurs who saw the same market that Cane did for class-management software, that would change his life.Cane formed a small company in 1996 while in school, but it would be his meeting Matt Pittinsky and Michael Chasen, two young entrepreneurs who saw the same market that Cane did for class-management software, that would change his life.
   ...
   Chasen and Pittinsky joined forces with Cane in 1998 when their fledgling start-up, Blackboard Inc., bought Cane's software company, CourseInfo LLC.
   ...
   The threesome became interdependent, with Pittinsky the high-tech evangelist, Chasen the company builder and Cane the inventor of Blackboard.
   ...
   Chasen, Blackboard's chief executive, remembers Cane not only for his technical savvy but also for his deep understanding of how technology could make education easier.
   ...
   'One of the great things about Blackboard is we fundamentally changed the way people learn around the world,' Chasen said. 'That's why people like Dan stayed around.They really liked what they were doing.'
   
   Over the first six years, Pittinsky, Chasen and Cane raised $120 million from venture capital firms before taking Blackboard public in 2004.
   ...
   But the firm invested six months later after seeing Cane's robust software.
   ...
   In search of a new challenge, Cane left Blackboard last year and formed Kadoo with another Blackboard alumnus, Christopher Etesse, the new company's chief executive officer, who works from a headquarters office in Washington, D.C..
   ...
   As chief technical officer, Cane began to develop Web software last year in the technology business incubator at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.
   
   He later moved to Swinton Avenue in Delray Beach, about 30 yards from the city's Atlantic Avenue strip.
   
   'We needed to be downtown where it's alive, not in some office park,' Cane said.
   
   For now, Kadoo's experimental Web-based platform is in development and is not open to the general public.But Cane's goal is to create a one-stop site for all things that people do online, and make money off advertising.
   
   Users will start their online experience on the Kadoo site and finish it on Kadoo, if Cane has his way.
   ...
   'My friends see me as 'partyguy23,' but my family sees me as Dan Cane,' he said.

2. 2. www.edc-tech.org

   www.edc-tech.org/index.php?src - [Cached]

   Published on: 4/16/2008   Last Visited: 6/13/2008

   The Enterprise Development Corporation of South Florida, (EDC), a public/private partnership specializing in providing business development services to emerging science and technology companies, announced today that Daniel Cane, co-founder of Blackboard (NASDAQ:BBBB) will each be speaking at its 10th Annual Emerging Technology Business Showcase (ETBS).
   ...
   About Daniel Cane:
   
   Daniel is a serial entrepreneur and pioneer in the effort to enhance education through technology.As the VP of R&D and co-Founder of Blackboard Inc, he was instrumental in growing the company through five private rounds of financing - raising over $100 million dollars in venture capital and in 2004 helped take the company public on the NASDAQ (BBBB).Daniel has helped Blackboard grow from start-up to over $200 million in annual revenues, over 800 employees and over a $1B market cap.Blackboard's flagship products are used by millions of students across more than 3,400 academic institutions in 70 countries.
   
   Currently Daniel is CTO and co-founder of Kadoo, Inc, which is creating the first comprehensive Social Information Management System (SIMS) that aggregates and intelligently integrates Personal Content Management, Web Applications, and Social Networking capabilities.

3. 3. Blackboard Media Center

   www.blackboard.com/company/pre - [Cached]

   Last Visited: 5/22/2008

   "The combination of iParadigms' Turnitin offering combined with the Blackboard Learning System and the Blackboard Portal System provides instructors with a seamless way to guard against plagiarism on campus," said Dan Cane, Senior Vice President of Research and Development at Blackboard.