Co-Founder & Creator of ACT!, Software Entrepreneur
Beginning with the co-invention of ACT! Mike Muhney has been recognized as a global visionary and powerful speaker on the subject of effective business relationships. He has publicly spoken to over 150,000 people worldwide on improving the way they do business, and he has often been interviewed and written about in numerous global publications on the topics of entrepreneurship, market creation, penetration and leadership, global expansion, and motivational speaking.
Mike has enjoyed a varied, passionate and uniquely successful career in the high-tech industry. Born and raised in Chicago and graduating from the University of Illinois with a degree in Finance, with Honors, Mike began his career with IBM in 1975 and was professionally trained in their intensive full-time 6-month-long internal Sales School. He was ranked 6th out of his national class of 66 students, after which he sold mainframes and software solutions and achieved numerous Hundred Percent Clubs, IBM’s most successful sales fraternity.
In 1986 Mike and a friend co-founded the company Contact Software International and they co-invented ACT! which is credited with creating the category of Contact Management applications. ACT! also has been frequently credited with pioneering today’s CRM (Customer Relationship Management) industry. Released in 1987, ACT! went on to win over 100 awards globally, including numerous PC Magazine Editor’s Choice awards (the “Oscar” of any and all PC Industry Awards), and is still, after 23 years, the predominant Contact Manager with an extremely loyal following, estimated since its release to have numbered in excess of 10 million users worldwide.
ACT! was founded by two salesguys, so they divided their responsibilities easily into two segments - the outside stuff and the inside stuff. Mike was the outside guy, and developed and implemented all worldwide outside activities for ACT!, which chiefly were Sales, Marketing, and Business Development activities, along with all International Operations and Management. Contact Software built a worldwide network of wholesale distribution, retail, and channel partner markets in 23 countries and afforded Mike invaluable international experience. During this time Mike lived in Europe and managed a worldwide staff. Contact Software was sold to Symantec Corporation in 1993, earning handsome returns for all investors and employees.
After a few years in semi-retirement, Mike’s creativity, tenacious drive, confidence and visionary ability facilitated the opportunity to start another company, CelebritySoft, Inc., with Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley as partners, until Michael Jordan returned to basketball. Mike also was the Executive-in-Residence at the University of Illinois’s College of Commerce for 7 consecutive years, teaching marketing students and lecturing to the MBA classes. Mike was approached during this time to work with Deloitte Consulting as a Senior Manager, and was hired to be one of only three worldwide speakers at Deloitte for providing strategic implementation services for the successful deployment of CRM applications. Mike was chiefly responsible for architecting a lucrative partnership for Deloitte with Hewlett-Packard and CRM software company Baan across all of Europe. Soon after he was recruited to return as an executive to the software industry for Saleslogix, a NASDAQ-traded public software company and was the EVP and General Manager of all international operations with a global staff of over 110 people covering Europe, Asia Pac, and Latin America. Within two quarters of becoming the GM, he produced, for the first time in the history of the company, profitability in all three regions, none of which had ever before been profitable.
Presently, Mike serves as CEO of a start-up software company focused on creating innovative solutions in the area of business productivity providing on-demand information to an as yet untapped global market.
Mike and his wife Janet live in Keller, TX, have 4 children and 7 grandchildren. As if that doesn’t keep him busy enough, he also plays golf and is a fervent weightlifter, and still enjoys global travel after many years of global market development.
For more information on Mike’s schedule and availability to speak, please send inquiries to info@mikemuhney.com.
