Born: 1963
Education: B.S. in Electrical Engineering
from San Jose State. MBA from
Stanford University
Occupation: Senior Vice
President, Worldwide Sales and Field Operations, Google Inc.
Claim to Fame: Google
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Biography
Early Career:
Omid
Kordestani started his career in marketing, product
management,
and
business development at The 3DO Company, Go Corporation,
and Hewlett-Packard. Kordestani joined Netscape
as director of OEM Sales. During his four-year
stay at Netsape, he was
able to establish major accounts with clients such as
Citibank, AOL, Amazon,
Intuit, Travelocity,
Intel,
@Home, eBay, and Excite. While at Netscape, Kordestani
grew the company's website revenues from
$88 million
per annum to more
than $200
million per annum within 18 months. Innovative Googling:
In 1999, Kordestani
joined Google. From years of Internet experience, Kordestani
knew to avoid annoying pop-up ads and
intrusive flash banners. He implemented the idea of selling
paid listings. He  found this to be a simple, yet effective,
method which had been perfected by rival Overture. Paid
listings work as follows: sponsors pay for rights
to specific keywords:
when
a user enters a keyword, a related sponsor appears
alongside the search results. Kordestani believes
that the right relationships create the most effective
business solutions. He once
refused a multimillion-dollar deal because
the fit had not been right. He looks for quality int
he form of repeatable and sustainable revenue from a
long-term customer.
At
Google, he is given one of the most challenging and difficult
jobs: revenue generation. Today, as Vice President of
Business
Development
and Sales at the company, Kordestani leads a global team
of 90 sales people. With a 1.9% stake in the company
and a pending IPO in 2004, Kordestani will have more
than strong ad revenues to be smiling about. Analysts
estimate the company to be worth somewhere between $20
and $30
billion.
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Famous Iranians
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