Brian Wilson
425A Forest Avenue
Palo Alto, CA, 94301
(650) 455-3123


  Experience
  1/'07-pres Backblaze, Founder and CTO
Founded Backblaze which is an online Backup company.  Online Backup is a system where a small program always runs on your computer, and your important files, photographs, and music are encrypted then sent to the Backblaze servers running in San Francisco for safe keeping.  If your computer crashes or is stolen, you can recover your files through an easy to use web login. 		 
  6/'06-12/'06 Taking a Break from Work
The sale of MailFrontier afforded some time off from the working world to travel and relax. 		 
  '02-'06 MailFrontier, Founder and CTO
Founded MailFrontier with partner Pavni Diwanji, responsible for technical vision and product prototype when raising VC funding from NEA, DFJ, and Menlo Ventures. Went on to lead engineering team in building best of breed spam-blocking desktop software (MailFrontier Matador) and also best of breed gateway spam blocker deployed on Windows 2000/2003 server, Linux, and Solaris 2.9. Built product and company up to sustain revenue rates in ballpark of $10million/year, with servers deployed in 40,000+ person corporations filtering all email entering these corporations. Authored 5 patents during this time on core technology. Broadened offering to provide A/V, Anti-Fraud/Phishing, Policy Management, and Directory Protection in a comprehensive solution. Final outcome was to sell MailFrontier to SonicWALL returning a profit to our investors. 		 
  5/'01-3/'02 Tivo, Codeblaze Consultant
Extended Tivo with Nielsen Ratings tracking system, worked on UI enhancements, and worked on Japanese version of Tivo for Sony including indexing the program guide in Japanese.		  
  '99-'01 Kendara/Excite@Home, Chief Engineer
Employee number three and Chief Engineer at internet startup Kendara, which formed in May 1999 and grew to 35 employees and was purchased by Excite@Home in February, 2000. Responsible for design of client side of internet products. Final result was the Excite Toolbar, which can be downloaded from the Excite portal, inserts itself into Internet Explorer and expands the functionality of the browser with features such as Excite email notification, skinned browser, and smart searching. Designed and implemented XML protocol and parser for client to server communication, intelligently parsed web page content for analysis and relevance algorithms. Designed and implemented network communications layer based on HTTP, and behavior tracking of users. At Excite@Home, implemented network connectivity and performance tests using TCP/ICMP/IP for self install cable ISP project. These tests will be run in millions of homes as customers subscribe to the @Home cable modem service. 		 
  '94-'99 Silicon Graphics Inc, Software Engineer
Designed and implemented large portions of MovieMaker, a digital movie editor bundled on SGI systems based on the QuickTime file format. Also designed and implemented several digital media GUI components based on Motif. The components are used extensively throughout SGI's dmedia tools. Also worked on InPerson, an internet based video conferencing system.		  
  '92-'94 Apple Computer, Software Engineer
Responsible for design and implementation of the X-Window portions of Macintosh Emulator running on Sun, HP, and IBM workstations, including imaging, events, and cut and paste. Also created X-Window hypertext "infomercial" that shipped on every new Sun and HP workstation. Also modified X11R5 X-Clients to have an Apple look and feel.		  
  Fall '91 GMD-IPSI in Darmstadt, Germany, Researcher
Integrated Motif based wscrawl into existing video conference system. Designed and built extensions to hypertext authoring system SEPIA to support multi-author work.  Wrote and published several papers in technical conferences.		  
  '87-'90 Hewlett-Packard, Software Engineer
Engineer responsible for integration of the Hewlett-Packard X-Window product with the HP-UX 7.03 and 8.0 release. Worked on HP-VUE, which became "CDE", the industry standard Unix desktop. Also developed Motif 1.1 based text editor used extensively inside HP, and the Motif 1.1 and Xlib based shared white-board program "wscrawl." As a SEED, tested and debugged X-Windows servers and clients. Assisted in the initial server port from the X10 to X11 standard on HPs300 and HPs800. 		 
  '85-'89 Broderbund Software, Freelance Designer
Helped design and create original video game for Macintosh computer in C and Assembly language. Game was sold commercially on Commodore 64 and 128 and is shareware on the Macintosh.		  
  '85-'89 Oregon State University, Programmer/System Administrator
Responsible for day-to-day system maintenance and user assistance on various HP and ATT Unix systems for the Computer Science department for two years. For the Mathematics Department designed and implemented a program used throughout Oregon to grade, analyze, report placement test results to Oregon high school students.		  
       
  Education
  '90-'91 Stanford University Palo Alto, CA Masters degree in Computer Science completed September 1991. Emphasis on systems. Coursework in networks, distributed systems, concurrent programming, parallel computing, database design, computer graphics, and advanced operating systems. Polhemus Fellow and Phi Kappa Phi scholar.  
  '85-'90 Oregon State University Corvallis, OR B.S. in Engineering-Physics awarded June, 1990. B.S. Computer Science awarded June, 1989. Cumulative GPA: 4.00. OSU presidential Scholar, member several honor societies, Highest Scholastic Award four years.  
       
  Publications & Patents
    [Patent 7921204, Granted April 2011] Message testing based on a determinate message classification and minimized resource consumption.  Authors: Wilson, Koblas, Eikenberry, Wieneke, Uyeda, Nufire, Oliver  
    [Patent 7882189, Granted February 2011] Using Distinguishing Properties to Classify Messages  Authors: Wilson, Koblas, Penzias  
    [Patent 7562122, Granted July 2009] Message classification using allowed items.  Authors: Wilson, Oliver, Koblas  
    [Patent 7546348, Granted June 2009] Message handling with selective user participation (Email Challenge Response)  Authors: Wilson, Ng, Uyeda, Eikenberry, Koblas  
    [Patent 7539726, Granted May 2009] Message testing.  Authors: Wilson, Koblas, Oliver, Eikenberry, Wieneke, Uyeda, Nufire, Oliver  
    [Patent 7406502, Granted November 2008] Method and system for classifying a message based on canonical equivalent of acceptable items included in the message.  Authors: Wilson, Oliver, Koblas  
    [Patent 7299261, Granted November 2007] Message classification using a summary.  Authors: Wilson, Koblas, Oliver  
    [Wilson, 1992] WSCRAWL 2.0: A Shared Whiteboard Based on X-Windows. Proceedings of the Workshop on Real Time Group Drawing and Writing Tools (CSCW'92), Toronto Canada, November 1992.  
    [Haake & Wilson, 1992] Supporting Collaborative Writing of Hyperdocuments in SEPIA. Proceedings of the Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'92), Toronto, Canada, November 1992.