Ed Esber

Edward M. Esber, Jr.
Born	1952 Cleveland, Ohio, US

Edward M. Esber, Jr. is the former CEO of Ashton-Tate and initiated its sale to Borland. Esber was fired from Ashton Tate over disagreements on strategy and acquisitions with the board. Esber presently works as an angel investor in Silicon Valley.

Edward Esber graduated with a BS computer engineering degree from Case Institute of Technology in 1974. He later earned a MS in electrical engineering from Syracuse University while working with IBM in 1976. He then went on to earn a Masters of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School, in 1978.

Esber was born in Cleveland, Ohio.

In 1979, Dan Flystra recruited Esber to run worldwide sales and marketing for Personal Software (later renamed VisiCorp). He has also worked for IBM and Texas Instruments

He has also been appointed marketing vice-president at VisiCorp between 1979-1985. While there, he helped manage distribution of the first micro-software programme, Visicalc.

Esber took over Ashton Tate in 1985. During his time as CEO, Ashton-Tate acquired several companies, including Decision Resources and MultiMate.

He stepped down as chairman in May 1990, after a copy of a dBase was released with several major bugs still present.

In 1994, he was appointed CEO of Creative Labs.

Esber was a founding member in 1997 of The Angels Forum, a professional, Silicon Valley based group of angel investors. He also is a member of the management team of The Halo Funds. He is also a member of the Utah Capital Investment Corporation.

Esber currently sits on the boards of Panterra Networks and is co-chair of the emeriti trustee committee of Case Western Reserve University. In the past Esber has served on the boards of Activision, Ashton Tate, Quantum Corporation, SonicBlue. Pansophic Systems, Integrated Circuits System Technology and many private companies.

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