Avram Miller

Avram Miller (born January 27, 1945) is an American businessman, corporate venture capitalist, scientist and technologist.

After graduating from Drew School, a private high school in San Francisco, in 1963, Miller joined the United States Merchant Marine as a steward.

He was active in both the civil rights and anti-war movements.

Toward the end of 1966, Miller began work at the Langley Porter Institute, University of California San Francisco Medical School, under Joseph Kamiya, PhD, who was a pioneer in the study of biofeedback.

Miller developed much of the equipment that was used in this research.

In early 1969, Miller joined cardiologist Paul Hugenholtz, who was starting a new cardiovascular institute at Erasmus University Rotterdam, called The Thoraxcenter.

His primary task was to build a computer department.

Moving with his family to Israel in 1974, Miller joined medical technology manufacturer Mennen-Greatbatch (now Mennen Medical) as founder and director of their computer division.

He also was named Adjunct Associate Professor at Tel Aviv University School of Medicine, working in the Department of Cardiology under Professor Henry N. Neufeld.

Returning to the United States in 1979, Miller joined the Central Engineering Department of Digital Equipment Corporation.

Miller managed the group responsible for hardware development and support of low-end computers.

A year later, Ken Olsen, Digital's founder and CEO, chose Miller to head a new group dedicated to developing the company's entry into the personal computer market.

The products were known as the Professional Series.

The Professional 350, introduced at the 1982 National Computer Conference in Houston, TX, ran a multiprocessing operating system, a fully bitmapped display, and had built-in Ethernet capability.

In 1983, Miller became Chief Operating Officer at Franklin Computer Corporation (now Franklin Electronic Publishers, Inc.), an early-stage Apple II clone manufacturer.

Miller was later named president.

Under Miller, Franklin reached $80 million in sales, but a legal battle with Apple hindered it greatly.

He served as vice president, Business Development for Intel Corporation (1984-1999).

With Leslie L. Vadász, he co-founded Intel Capital.

He led Intel's initiative to help create and expand residential broadband Internet access.

After leaving Intel, he founded The Avram Miller Company, a consulting firm for technology companies.

Miller has served as a senior advisor to Lazard, and has served as a director of various companies including CMGI, World Online, PCCW, and entertainment companies including Maxis and King World Productions.

Miller left Franklin in April 1984.

Miller joined Intel Corporation in August 1984, initially working with "The System Group," a division that developed computer systems.

Miller reported to Les Vadász, who had led the company's efforts to develop its first microprocessor.

Miller focused on mergers, joint ventures, strategic partnerships and minority investments.

In 1988, Miller was named Vice President, Business Development, and later was elected Corporate Vice President by the Intel board.

With the support of Intel's CEO Andy Grove, Vadász and Miller created the Corporative Business Development group (CBD), later renamed Intel Capital.

Intel Capital became a successful corporative venture group in the technology sector.

Miller's group was an investor in Mark Cuban's Broadcast.com, internet infrastructure and security services company Verisign, communications semiconductor maker Broadcom, interactive publications innovator LAUNCH Media, the web-hosting service Geocities, the tech media site CNET and broadband network provider Covad (now part of MegaPath Corporation).

Miller's group also invested in CMGI (now ModusLink Global Solutions, Inc.) and PCCW.

Miller was the founding chair of Plugged In, a non-profit computer literacy program for underserved urban youth (1992-1999), a senior advisor to Equal Access (1999-2012) and a trustee of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) (1998-2002).

Avram Miller is a San Franciscan from a middle-class Jewish family.

In 1992, Miller was asked by Andy Grove to be the Intel point person working with Microsoft to develop a number of consumer initiatives.

They sought to develop an interactive set-top box for the cable television industry.

This project also involved General Instrument (GI) owned Jerrold, a large supplier of set-tops.

Working with Intel and Microsoft was GI CTO Matt Miller (no relation).

By the end of 1992, it was determined that an interactive set-top box would be too expensive.

With Matt Miller, Avram Miller recognized much of the digital TV technology could be used for high-speed residential broadband connections.

GI and Intel began to develop both cable modems and the head-end equipment used as a gateway to the Internet.