Glen Meakem, Forever Inc.
To say that Glen Meakem has been a successful entrepreneur would be an understatement. Glen was an early achiever in the technology boom, founding several high tech firms. Among them were Kiva Systems- sold to Amazon, Hotpads-sold to Zillow, Shipwire-sold to Ingram Micro, and CloudMeter-sold to Splunk.
Glen is a venture capitalist, and co-founder of Freemarkets, which at its height, had a market cap of $13 billion. In addition to all of this, Glen hosts a nationally syndicated radio program, “Glen Meakem on the weekend.” Glen was a combat officer in the Gulf War, and is a Harvard MBA.
His latest venture is perhaps his most interesting. Glen founded Forever Inc in 2012. Forever is the world’s first and only permanent media storage and sharing company. Visit Forever’s site HERE. Forever is actually hosting a 3 day photo and scrapbooking extravaganza right here in the Buckhead area September 24-27. You can read about that HERE.
Most of us use digital media to take pictures, videos, and generate documents. We attempt to store them for safekeeping, perhaps on a DVD, hard drive, or even using the online storage sites.
A common and reasonable concern has been that the media we’re using to back things up might not be readable in a few years. As a for instance, at one time our company backed up files on 7 1/4 inch floppy disks. We now have nothing that will read those disks. There is almost no media any of us are using, that will not be replaced or fail at some point.
That has opened up a huge market for online backup, but there are issues. Google, for instance, is a great company, and does a good job at storing your data online, but it has a downside. Google’s free storage is limited, and they mine your data. Under Google’s present plan, you can only store up to 16 MP resolution. Larger files are compressed, and original documents are discarded. The question of exactly who owns those files once uploaded is an open question. Facebook, for instance, to their credit, is very open that THEY own your photos once you upload them.
Glen founded Forever with a different mindset. Their mission is to back up your media and memories, guaranteed for your life plus 100 years. To accomplish this, he founded the Forever Guarantee Fund, designed to grow over time like an endowment. The majority of fees paid by Forever subscribers goes to this fund, to ensure that the media is preserved for generations. It’s a unique and smart approach, much like most of Glen’s other business ideas.
Don’t miss this conversation with one of the most interesting businessmen you’ll ever hear. Glen’s interview with Eddie airs at 11 AM, Saturday June 20th.
Driven to Business, hosted by Eddie Mayfield is heard every Saturday morning on Atlanta’s business radio, WAFS, 1190 AM. The show is streamed live on biz1190.com and podcast on eddiemayfield.com and itunes.
Simply the best business radio in Atlanta.. Driven to Business.