KIM KARIN POLESE

Net Worth        : $18.5 billion

Kim Karin Polese, 48, who is CEO of SpikeSource, and was one of the most prominent Silicon Valley executives during the dot-com era. In 1997, she made Time Magazine’s list of “The 25 Most Influential Americans”. After leaving Sun in 1996 she co-founded Marimba, a Java-based business, where she served as CEO until 2000, leading Marimba through its public offering in 1999 and bringing it to profitability before selling it to BMC Software for $239 million in 2004.

Since September 2004, Polese has been CEO of SpikeSource, a provider of business-ready open source solutions. In March 1997, Time magazine anointed Polese one of the top 25 most influential Americans. In 1999, the company went public, and in 2000 Polese stepped down as CEO. A lot of companies may have proprietary software like Vignette, for example, but now they want to add more and they want to make that application available to more customers.

A noted and respected industry speaker, Polese has been named one of Time magazine’s Top 25 Most Influential People in America, one of Red Herring’s Top 20 Entrepreneurs, and one of Computer Reseller News’ Top 25 Executives. She also serves on the executive council of TechNet, a bipartisan network of executives that promotes the growth of the technology economy and the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. Polese served on the board of Technorati, Inc. from 2004 to 2006.

“Neuros, has launched, what they claim to be the first ever open source linux embedded media center, allowing you to do a whole host of interesting things with video and music.”

“Open source databases can save enterprises up to 60% in costs, however it is claimed they lack performance and uptime! Nonesense we cry.”