Sign in
Shai Agassi
Photo: Eirik Solheim, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons12

Shai Agassi

Israeli entrepreneur (born 1968)

Shai Agassi (Hebrew: שי אגסי; born April 19, 1968) is an Israeli entrepreneur known for his involvement in the electric vehicle industry. He is the founder and former CEO of Better Place, which had developed a model and infrastructure for employing electric cars as an alternative to fossil fuel technology.2

From Wikipedia’s article on Shai Agassi (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Born Apr 19, 1968.1

About

The company went bankrupt in 2013, after Agassi spent over $850 million while deploying fewer than 1000 cars.

Prior to founding Better Place, Agassi was President of the Products and Technology Group (PTG) at SAP AG until 2007. In 2003, at the age of 36, Agassi was named one of the top 20 'Global Influentials for 2003' by CNN-Time magazine. In 2008, he was named one of TIME's "Heroes of the Environment". 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.

Throughout the 1990s, Agassi started and sold a number of technology startups, in the areas of enterprise software, internet technology, multimedia and small business administration. Agassi has a bachelor's degree in computer science and has been awarded a large number of patents in software, automotive and energy infrastructure.

From Wikipedia’s article on Shai Agassi, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2

Companies

Early life and education

  • Date not recordedTechnion – Israel Institute of Technology3

Career

Occupation: business executive.6

  • Date not recordedFounded Better Place4
  • Date not recordedChief executive officer5

Software entrepreneurship

After graduating from 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 Corporation, and Microsoft. TopTier was a leading enterprise portal vendor when SAP acquired the company in April 2001 at a price of US$400 million.

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 wished to be the next 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.

From Wikipedia’s article on Shai Agassi (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Personal life

  • BornApr 19, 1968, Ramat Gan7
  • CitizenshipIsrael8
  • ResidenceKfar Shmaryahu9

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12