Joe Mohen

Joseph T. Mohen, better known as Joe Mohen, (born July 19, 1956) was the CEO and co-founder of election.com, which ran the Arizona Democratic Primary in March 2000, the world’s first legally binding election conducted on the Internet, according to the company. He was also the founder of SpiralFrog, an ad-supported music download service, which closed in March 2009.

Early life and childhood

Mohen was born in the New York City borough of Queens, the oldest of twelve children of Joseph Conrad Mohen (born 1935) and Virginia Ann Mohen (born 1935), both descendents of Irish Immigrants. In 1960, when he was four, the family moved to Garden City on Long Island. There he attended a local Catholic School, St. Anne’s, and later an Episcopal Preparatory School, St. Paul’s. He later attended Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and Manhattan College in New York City.

Early career

Mohen founded Proginet Corporation of which he served as CEO until September 1996, and remained a Chairman through 1998. In 1987, Proginet created a complex software package called XCOM, which sold in 1992 to a predecessor company of Computer Associates, and was one of the software products to span more than a eleven computer operating systems. The renamed CA-XCOM is still sold by Computer Associates today. As CEO, Mohen secured equity stakes from both Novell and Microsoft in Proginet. Mohen also was a contributing editor and columnist for PC Week (now eWeek), Data Communications Magazine, and Network World.; in 1989, he wrote a widely quoted article, called "Seeking a Cure for the Vaporware Epidemic", writing "my own estimate is that at the time of announcement, 10% of software products don't actually exist ... Vendors that are unwilling to [prove it exists] shouldn't announce their packages to the press", blaming the press the press for not investigating claims by developers, saying "If the pharmaceutical industry were this careless, I could announce a cure for cancer today — to a believing press."

election.com

Mohen is best known for co-founding election.com, with which in 1999 he was able to recruit Jack Kemp and former Irish Taoiseach (i.e. Prime Minister) Garret Fitzgerald to the board. elecion.com [sic] is best known for administering the 2000 Arizona Democratic presidential primary Internet election. The company, originally called Votation.com, was started in part with equity investments from VeriSign and Accenture. In February election.com acquired NewVoter.com with then internet entrepreneur and civil rights advocate Mark Strama (who was subsequently elected to the Texas State legislature in 2004), who joined election.com as Vice President. Mohen stepped down as CEO of election.com in 2001. Two years after Mohen left, the public sector elections business of election.com was acquired by Accenture.

Automating Catholic Church finance

In late 2001, Mohen founded ParishPay, which automated handling of money for churches around the United States. The company replaced the envelop system, whereby donations were placed into envelops each Sabbath, with a system in which parish members could have their donations automatically debited from their bank or credit card accounts each month. Shortly after its launch, the system was featured in a front page story in the New York Times, after signing the Catholic Dioceses of Chicago, San Jose, and Orlando, and ParishPay received Venture Capital financing in late 2002. Mohen sold his interest In ParishPay to start SpiralFrog, although ParishPay grew substantially and was later merged with SmartTuition.

Digital music and SpiralFrog

Mohen started SpiralFrog, Inc. in an effort to create a market driven solution to digital music piracy. In 2004, a focus group in New York City was held to determine how to solve the problem of young people stealing music. One of the attendees in the focus group responded “Why don’t you just give away the music”….and show advertising during the downloads. Most doubted the four major record labels would ever go along with the idea, especially the largest music company - Universal Music Group, Mohen set out to recruit directors from music and advertising to obtain the needed licenses. Among those recruited included former CEOs Jay Bernman (IFPI), Frances Preston (BMI), and Robin Kent (Interpublic Universal McCann). Finally, on August 28, 2006, the Financial Times reported in its lead story, that it had granted SpiralFrog the first ever license to give away its complete catalog of music to consumers for free, in return for a share of the advertising revenues.

However, the launch of SpiralFrog was delayed, due to technical and licensing delays, and an internal control fight. Robin Kent, the British advertising executive who had been recruited by Mohen the year before, attempted a spectacular corporate takeover in December 2006, which was widely reported in the press. Mohen emerged the winner in what was later known as the "Boxing Day Massacre", but most industry observers believed that SpiralFrog.com would never launch. Mohen continued to insist that he would overcome these obstacles and launch the site. Mohen went on to sign all remaining major music publishers, and performing rights societies, financed the company with exchangeable debt, and SprialFrog.com finally launched on September 17, 2007. In June 2008, Mohen concluded an agreement with the British music company EMI, whose catalog was added to SpiralFrog prior to the ColdPlay Viva La Vida tour. The web site grew to three million songs available.

However the collapse of the stock market in September 2008, and the ensuing credit crisis, combined with contraction of the advertising markets, left SpiralFrog unable to meet its collateralized note agreements. SpiralFrog was particularly vulnerable to the credit crisis because it was debt financed as opposed to equity financed, and its backers were hedge funds who were themselves facing huge redemptions. Its loans were called and SpiralFrog was forced to close.

Awards and miscellaneous

Mohen has accepted Awards at the Long Island Software Awards in 1997, 2000, and 2008. He also gave the keynote address at the Interop Conference in Washington in 1993, and an address to the South African Technology leadership in Pretoria in 1990 on transition after Apartheid. He is a former member of the National Association of Corporate Directors Blue Ribbon Commission on Corporate Governance. Mohen was also selected to speak onstage with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer when Microsoft announced that it had broken the previous record for the TPS benchmark for scalable systems in September 2000.

Mohen is the active in the charity organized by Major League Baseball for keeping minority and underprivileged youth active in sports. He administrates the Long Island, New York, chapter of Rebuilding Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI), through Garden City Bombers Baseball non-profit organization, of which is he one of the founders; this organizations combines young people from minority and affluent neighborhoods on the same baseball teams, and combines the teaching of baseball skills, with academic support, and other life lessons. In 2006 and 2007, he organized a number of baseball tournaments in the Dominican Republic, and in July 2010 he helped organize the first Governor's tee ball game at the Executive Mansion in Albany, New York.

References

Category:American chief executives Category:Living people Category:1956 births