Technology >> CEO Interviews >> November 15, 1999
DONALD R. KATZ is Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the
Board of Audible, Inc., the Internet's premier audio information and
entertainment service. Audible, founded in 1995 and based in Wayne, New
Jersey, developed the first copyright-secure system for distributing
audio via the Internet for playback at or away from the PC and the
company commercialized the first digital audio player in 1997. Mr. Katz
won the 2004 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for New
Jersey. He has also led Audible to top 10 rankings in the Deloitte &
Touche Fast 50 competition for 2002, 2003 and 2004. He was also honored
in 1999 as Entrepreneur of the Year by Silicon Alley trade magazine
Alley Cat News for his pioneering work at Audible. Before founding
Audible, Mr. Katz was a successful author and journalist for 20 years.
He is the author of Home Fires: An Intimate Portrait of One Middle-Class
Family in Postwar America, which was nominated for a National Book
Critics Circle Award; The Big Store: Inside the Crisis and Revolution at
Sears, winner of the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Nonfiction; and
Just Do It: The Nike Spirit in the Corporate World. Mr. Katz has served
as a contributing editor for Rolling Stone, Esquire, Outside, Sports
Illustrated, Men's Journal and Worth, and his work has won or been
nominated for several National Magazine Awards. In 2001, Random House
published a two-volume collection of Mr. Katz's award-winning magazine
stories, King of the Ferret Leggers and Other True Stories and Valley of
the Fallen and Other Places. Mr. Katz also served as a consultant on
editorial, startup, content development projects, and digital media
issues for Fidelity Investments, Whittle Communications, Wenner Media,
Time-Warner, and Mariah Publications, and he has lectured widely on
money and business issues, journalism, and nonfiction literature at
universities, libraries and corporate management gatherings. Mr. Katz
graduated from New York University's honor program in English in 1974.
He also attended The University of Chicago and The London School of
Economics. He holds an MSc in Economics from The London School of
Economics. Profile
Audible, just to set the stage for our readers?
Mr. Katz: Audible was founded in late 1995 to address the potential
