Shai Agassi - Biography

Shai Agassi (born 1968) is an Israeli entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of Better Place, which has developed a model and infrastructure for employing electric cars as an alternative to fossil fuel technology. Agassi was President of the Products and Technology Group (PTG) at SAP AG. In 2003, at the age of 36, Agassi was named one of the top 20 'Global Influentials for 2003' by CNN-Time magazine. In 2009, Agassi was included in TIME magazine's 100 most influential people list. In 2010, Foreign Policy magazine included Agassi on its annual list of the 100 most influential global thinkers.

1 Business entrepreneurship
2 SAP executive
3 Better Place
4 See also
5 External links

Business entrepreneurship

After graduating Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Agassi set out as a software entrepreneur. He founded TopTier Software (originally called Quicksoft Development) in Israel in 1992 and later moved the company's headquarters to California. Agassi served the company in various capacities including chairman, chief technology officer, and then CEO. He was directly involved in all critical phases of the company's development, including its strategic plan, technical direction and financing, management of two acquisitions, and negotiation of OEM agreements with companies such as SAP, Baan, and Microsoft. TopTier was a leading enterprise portal vendor when SAP acquired the company in April 2001 at a price of $400 million USD.

In addition to TopTier Software, Agassi co-founded several other companies with his father, Reuven Agassi, including Quicksoft Ltd., a leading multimedia software localization and distribution company in the Israeli market; TopManage, a developer of small business software that was also acquired by SAP in April 2002 (which became SAP Business One, the small business offering by SAP); and Quicksoft Media, a multimedia production company that ceased operations in 1995.

SAP executive

He was next in line for the position of CEO of SAP after Henning Kagermann vacated that space in 2007. However, Mr. Kagermann's contract as CEO was extended until 2009 by the supervisory board. This led Agassi to resign.

At SAP he was responsible for SAP's overall technology strategy and execution. In this leadership position, he oversaw the development of the integration and application platform SAP NetWeaver, SAP xApps packaged composite applications, SAP SRM, and SAP Business One. Before his appointment to the SAP Executive Board, Agassi was CEO of SAP Portals and later of the combined company SAP Markets and SAP Portals, which previously operated as a fully owned subsidiary of SAP AG. He was appointed to the SAP Executive Board in 2002. Together with the head of the Application Platform & Architecture (AP&A) group, Peter Zencke, Agassi co-led the Suite Architecture Team, which aligns the software architecture across all SAP solutions.

Better Place

In January 2008, the Israeli government announced its support for a broad effort to promote the use of electric cars, embracing a joint venture between Better Place, Renault and its partner, Nissan Motor Company. Renault and Better Place are working on development of exchangeable batteries.

Agassi initially raised $200MM for this project, one of the largest and fastest seed rounds in history. Investors include VantagePoint Venture Partners, Israel Corporation, Israel Cleantech Ventures, Morgan Stanley, and private investors led by Michael Granoff of Maniv Energy Capital. In 2009 he raised an additional $135 million for Better Place Denmark, including an investment from DONG Energy the leading utility in Denmark. Following the announcement in Israel, Better Place had launched its network in Denmark, Australia and in two US locations - Hawaii and Northern California. The company has said it is in talks with more than 25 countries around the world. In early 2010, Better Place raised its Series-B round at an amount of $350MM led by new investors from HSBC, Morgan Stanley and Lazard, as well as all previous investors. In November of 2011, the company raised its third equity financing round of $200 million from a group of investors including GE, UBS bank and others. The last round's valuation of $2.25B is one of the highest valuations for pre-revenue companies in history.

In April 2008, Deutsche Bank analysts reportedly concluded that the company's approach could be a "paradigm shift" that causes "massive disruption" to the auto industry, and which has "the potential to eliminate the gasoline engine altogether." Charlie Rose interviewed Agassi on December 1, 2010 for his show where he discussed the electric car.