John E. Richards

Managing Director

Rollins Center for eBusiness

After earning a degree in chemistry from Brigham Young University, John E. Richards honed his managerial skills by starting, running, and selling companies. He recently founded in late 2001 an anti-counterfeiting and authentication company called Stardust Technologies, Inc. He has also contributed to the founding of CleanFilms, Inc., the NetFlix of edited movies.

Appointed to an associate professorship at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, John teaches courses in entrepreneurial management and e-business strategy in the Marriott School of Management and the School of Technology. He is the Managing Director of the Rollins Center for eBusiness@BYU, where he serves on the Advisory Board, Associate Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at BYU, for which he is a Gold Founder, and Associate Managing Director of the Center for Economic Self-Reliance.

John has served on many company boards. He also served for several years as board member, committee chairman, and committee member of several industry trade groups. John has been an active investor, mentor, coach, consultant, and participant in over a dozen enterprises in the past few years.

John served from 1985 to 1997 as vice president and then president of his own privately held corporation in Seattle, Washington. In 1994, he co-developed and launched the first-ever online Yellow Pages derived from an offline print product. He then formed an Internet company, Yellow Pages on the Internet, LLC (YPI), to consolidate the Yellow Pages industry on the Web. InfoSpace acquired YPI in 1997. John consulted for InfoSpace after the acquisition and then joined InfoSpace full-time after selling NTD Publishing, Inc. in late 1997. From 1998-2001, John served as vice president of InfoSpace, Inc. He was at "Ground Zero" of the Internet Revolution, seeing InfoSpace rise from less than 10 people to an Internet juggernaut valued at a peak market capitalization of over $35 billion.

A frequent speaker at universities, conventions, workshops and tradeshows on various aspects of business, John remains active as an investor in businesses and mentor to entrepreneurs. John, his wife Susan, and their four children have homes in Washington and Utah.

Advisory Board

• Advisory Board Members
• Make a Donation
• Member List
• Past meetings
• Upcoming meetings

Courses

• eBusiness Lecture Series
• Management Consulting
• Web Analytics

Web Analytics Competition

• Contest Information
• Fall 2006 Winners
• Winter 2007 Winners

e-Business Plan Competition

• Contest Information
• Judging Criteria
• Winners 2006
• Business Plan Competition

Contact Us

• Rollins Center for eBusiness
• 574 TNRB, Provo, UT 84602
• Phone: (801) 422-2815
• Fax: (801) 422-3449
• E-mail: ebusiness@byu.edu