A man of a thousand ideas

Ideas born from chance encounters

Kahn first acquired his expertise in software development while studying mathematics at ETH Zurich in the 1970s. There, he met Niklaus Wirth, an ETH professor and creator of the Pascal programming language. “Niklaus made a huge impression on me right from the start,” says Kahn. “Our relationship lasted over four decades, until he passed away last year.” Chance encounters and personal connections of this kind inspired ideas such as Turbo Pascal, many of which were years ahead of their time.

ETH also taught him analytical thinking, says Kahn, and left him with a treasure trove of wonderful memories. A Parisian by birth, Kahn found Zur­ich to be an entirely new experience: a different country, a different language, a city nestled between a lake and the mountains. “And, of course, the spirit of Albert Einstein roaming the lofty halls of my university!” he says.

A keen musician, Khan was also delighted by Zurich’s lively music scene. Alongside his studies in mathematics, he completed a Master’s degree in musicology, composition and classical flute at the Zurich Music Conservatory. “I’ve always loved science, and I inherited a passion for music from my mother, a professional violinist,” he says.

The early days of silicon valley

After finishing his degree programme, Kahn initially taught mathematics at the University of Nice. But his restless mind refused to settle. Eventually, his desire for more took him to Silicon Valley, where a nascent tech boom was already underway. Alone, and without a work permit, he started out making printer cables for a computer shop, barely earning enough to live on.

He eventually became a freelance consultant, offering his services to hardware and software companies including HP and LG. It was during this period that he met three young Danish entrepreneurs, with whom he would later co-found Borland Inc. in 1983.

As Chairman, President and CEO of Borland, Kahn led the company to great success with software products such as Turbo Pascal, Turbo C++, Prolog, Sidekick and Paradox. By the mid-1990s, Borland had become the world’s third-largest software company with 4,000 employees and annual revenues exceeding half a billion US dollars. However, diverging visions between Kahn and the supervisory board led him to establish a pioneering spin-off in 1994 called Starfish Software, together with Sonia Lee, who would later become his wife. One year later, he left Borland for good to focus fully on his new company.

Starfish developed innovative technologies such as the first wireless synchronisation system. Just three years after it was founded, Kahn and Lee sold the company to Motorola. “Anyone who creates a new technology wants to see it used by as many people as possible,” says Kahn. “Motorola was the perfect company to take our innovation forward.”

Kahn’s entrepreneurial streak continued with LightSurf, which sought to realise his vision of a commercial camera phone. LightSurf became a global leader in multimedia technology, licensing its wireless real-time photo-sharing solutions to major phone manufacturers. In 2005, Kahn and Lee sold the company to VeriSign, continuing their mission to make transformative technologies accessible to a wider audience. By this time, Kahn had already shifted his attention to a new venture, Fullpower. Founded in 2003, once again in partnership with Lee, Fullpower develops technologies used in video games, automotive navigation systems, fitness trackers – and nearly every mobile phone on the market.

A new start with fullpower

One of Fullpower’s most notable innovations emerged from Kahn’s passion for sailing. “Getting enough sleep is extremely challenging when you’re on a long voyage,” he says. Seeking a way to optimise sleep quality and maximise sailing time, Kahn developed proto­type AI sleep trackers. Equipped with bio­sensors, they were designed to enable the optimum 26-minute power nap. This innovation paved the way for Sleeptracker-AI, a sleep monitoring system now embedded in millions of mattresses around the world.

“Sleeptracker-AI can track two people at once and deliver personalised tips on how to improve your sleep,” says Kahn. Thanks to AI, the system can also make its own improvements to a user’s sleep routine. For instance, the cloud-based system can detect snoring through sensors and silently adjust the sleeper’s head position.

An elite circle of friends

Kahn looks surprised when asked if his companies collaborate with universities: “I run all my companies like a research university!” He explains that most development work is carried out in-house, but that cooperation with leading universities is always an option if the job requires it. Fullpower, for example, works with both Stanford and UC San Francisco.

Many of the eminent researchers with whom he works have also become personal friends. “I’m real­ly fortunate to know some people who are titans in their fields,” he says. Besides Niklaus Wirth, he also mentions Marvin Minsky, founder of the AI Lab at MIT, who, together with colleagues, coined the term “artificial intelligence” and described its key feature; and Alan Kay, a pioneer in object-oriented programming languages who worked on Smalltalk and Squeak. His circle of friends also includes Joseph Weizenbaum, an AI pioneer, Bjarne Stroustrup, the developer of the C++ programming language and Turing Award winner Yann LeCun.

“I love being at the forefront of big ideas and technologies,” he says. Kahn will discuss topics with his friends that might only enter public consciousness years later. “What I’m interested in is not so much daily news as fundamental principles.”