Roger Sippl

Roger J. Sippl,{{cite news |work=Business Week

|url=http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=138837&privcapId=116534182&previousCapId=12665683&previousTitle=WaveMaker%20Software,%20Inc

|title=Roger J. Sippl |access-date=October 25, 2022}}{{dead link|date=April 2023|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}} the sixth of seven children, grew up in Wausau, Wisconsin. His father Charles J. Sippl Jr. (1924-1991){{citation

|url=https://www.ancestors.familysearch.org/en/K26G-QGR/charles-sippl-jr-1924-1991

|title=Charles Sippl Jr (1924–1991)}} wrote the first computer dictionary in 1963. Sippl attended Corona del Mar High School in Corona Del Mar, California. For college, he attended UC Irvine where he was pre med for two years, and then transferred to UC Berkeley. There, he studied Biochemistry, Immunology and Computer Science.

Sippl is the founder of Informix Corporation, Vantive Corporation, Visigenic, and Elastic Intelligence.

While still a student at UC Berkeley, he obtained a full-time position as a programmer for Bechtel. Moving on to Cromemco, he landed a job as a programmer working for Harry Garland and Roger Melen. He asked permission to leave Cromemco to start his own software company, Relational Database Systems, Inc., in 1980 and Melen licensed Sippl’s designs to him as long as Cromemco received the first OEM on the product.

Sippl later said that he was unaware of Edgar Codd's work on relational databases when he began designing Informix's query language—only discovering later Christopher J. Date's analyses of Codd—and stated his amazement that Codd came to similar conclusions without customers.{{Cite interview |interviewer=Burton Grad |title=RDBMS Plenary 1: Early Years |url=https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2013/05/102702562-05-01-acc.pdf |pages=27-28, 31-33 |access-date=2025-05-30 |publisher=Computer History Museum |date=2007-06-12}} Needing more money, Sippl sold 10% of Relational Database Systems, Inc. to his then future wife for $20,000.{{Cite interview |interviewer=Luanne Johnson |title=RDBMS Workshop: Financing |url=https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2013/05/102702564-05-01-acc.pdf |access-date=2025-05-30 |publisher=Computer History Museum |date=2007-06-12}} He received $184,600 of VC angel funding. Attending a Spring Joint Computer Conference in Atlantic City, he joined a computer manufacturer’s tent where he helped to promote their product by using his new database system on their hardware. He sold a copy for $5000. The name Relational Database Systems, Inc. was changed to Informix Corporation.

Informix pioneered relational databases, 4GL application development tools, and OLTP database technology. In 1986, Sippl brought Informix public, with $20 million revenue per year. Informix is now a part of IBM after peaking at a $4,000,000,000 market cap.{{Cite web|url=http://sipplinvestments.com/team.html

|title=The Team}} He was CEO for ten years.

He was the cofounder and chairman of the Vantive Corporation. Vantive was a leader in CRM. When brought public, it was acquired by PeopleSoft/Oracle. Vantive peaked at a $1,000,000,000 market cap.

He also founded Visigenic in 1993, the first application server with the notion of sharing business logic. It was the beginning of three tier architecture and helped pioneer distributed object computing and the concept of the application server based on CORBA. In 1997, Borland acquired Visigenic. After bringing Visigenic public in 1998, Sippl was noteworthyawarded the Golden Hat Trick award: https://www. cbinsights .com/investor/roger-sippl for successfully bringing three Silicon Valley companies public.

He founded Elastic Intelligence in 1996, to improve connection to SaaS-based data. The company's main product is the Connection Cloud, an SQL-based Platform as a Service for SaaS data.{{cite web |url=http://www.connectioncloud.com/how-it-helps/index.php |title=How it Helps |website=www.connectioncloud.com |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120629001426/http://connectioncloud.com/how-it-helps/index.php |archive-date=2012-06-29}}

Sippl is a founding partner in Sippl MacDonald Ventures. He has invested in such companies as Illustra, Broadvision, SupportSoft and Red Pepper. He has been on over twelve boards of for-profit corporations, public and private. The public companies include Informix, Vantive, SupportSoft, and Interwoven, as well as having represented the software industry on the X/OPEN Board of Directors.

Sippl is a survivor of Hodgkin's disease while at Berkeley.{{Cite interview |interviewer=Luanne Johnson |title=RDBMS Workshop: Informix |url=https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2013/05/102702566-05-01-acc.pdf |access-date=2025-05-30 |publisher=Computer History Museum |date=2007-06-12}} He and his wife Liz have raised three children, and enjoy an active, outdoorsy life. Sippl also writes poetry.{{cite web |url=https://rogersippl.com/ |title=Home |website=rogersippl.com |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160114055144/http://www.rogersippl.com/ |archive-date=2016-01-14}} Sippl is also an amateur poker player. In 2015, he finished second in the $100,000 super high roller at the PCA in the Bahamas, winning more than $1.3 million.{{Cite web |title=PokerStars Caribbean Adventure - PCA 2015, #1 No Limit Hold'em - Super High Roller 8 Handed: Hendon Mob Poker Database |url=https://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/event.php?a=r&n=259061 |access-date=2024-05-03 |website=The Hendon Mob |language=en}} His total career tournament earnings from poker tournaments is over $3.8 million.{{Cite web |title=Roger Sippl's profile on The Hendon Mob |url=https://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=142801 |access-date=2024-05-03 |website=The Hendon Mob Poker Database |language=en}}

{{Reflist}}

• [http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=138837&privcapId=116534182&previousCapId=12665683&previousTitle=WaveMaker%20Software,%20Inc]{{dead link|date=January 2025|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}
• http://www.connectioncloud.com/how-it-helps/index.php
• http://sipplinvestments.com/team.html
• [https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102658001 Roger Sippl, oral history (ComputerHistory.org)]

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Category:Living people

Category:1955 births

Category:American technology chief executives

Category:American computer businesspeople

Category:Silicon Valley people

Category:People from Wausau, Wisconsin