Mr. Norton's Biography

Mr. Norton started his career as a software engineer doing development in the insurance industry which included leading edge early microcomputer applications and systems and security software.

He joined his first raw startup in 1983 as a systems engineer to develop and design tools for an early sales force auto mation (SFA) company. He developed very early development productivity tools that used object oriented software techniques and delivered competitive advantage to companies that used them.

In 1984 Mr. Norton join Business Research Corporation (the predecessor to Thomson Financial Services, now Thomson-Reuters) as employee #12, as Director of Software Development. FIRST CALL was developed and launched just a few months later and changed the way Wall Street distributed and managed it research, earning estimates and fundamental data. At the time FIRST CALL was one of the world's most sophisticated real-time, fault tolerant, world-wide satellite networks. After FIRST CALL's launch Mr. Norton ran a skunk works with several development teams for Thomson creating a new product virtually every year. While there he did product design, development, management and launch of five products over as many years. Each of these products was warmly accepted by the market and quickly grew revenues. Today several of these products are virtual monopolies or dominant in their market.

After Thomson acquisition by the $4 billion International Thomson Organization (Toronto exchange) Mr. Norton continued to develop other products and also to replace products developed by other Thomson holdings including Autex, Bond Buyer Video Munifacts and others.

In 1989 Mr. Norton left Thomson to found his fir st company, HomeView. Between 1989 and 1994 he created multimedia technology to tour homes for sale remotely, negotiated a $34MM financi ng from IBM and recruited about 80% of the Boston area brokers as members. By 1994 HomeView grew to 3 offices, $156MM in annualized revenues and over 150 employees. When IBM shut down its venture capital activities in 1994, and the IBM funding deal for HomeView's national expansion collapsed along with 100's of other IBM funded companies, Mr. Norton sold the company to a group of investors who wanted to rollout HomeView nationally as a franchise. They failed to understand the power of teh strategy and ended up closing it down 18 months after its purchase.

As a next act Mr. Norton did a turn-around of an early stage company called A+America, a philanthropic venture founded to help K-12 schools fund technology acquisitions. Although the company's primary business was a bricks and mortar program with national and regional retailers like Bob's Stores, Burger King, Sears and JC Penney, Mr. Norton conceived and launched the first on-line fundraising web site for schools which reached quick profitability. While a competitor spent $30 million and achieved little market penetration, A+America launched its site with minimal investment and achieve superior market share.

Since 2001 Mr. Norton has been consulting for companies and acting as an interim president and CEO. His experience since 1989 as a CEO and President, founding experience and strong technical background as a CTO allow him to consult on a much broader level than most consultants who generally have full-time experience in a single discipline.