Peter Behrendt
Deming Center for Entrepreneurship
Peter Behrendt joined Exabyte as President and Member of the Board in July of 1987. Three years later he was elected CEO and assumed the additional role of Chairman in January 1992. Mr. Behrendt directed all aspects of the company during its remarkable growth from zero revenue in 1987 to $383 Million in 1996 with a market capitalization of $ 1 Billion. During that short time Exabyte became the world’s largest business solely dedicated to the design, manufacture and sale of computer tape drives and libraries. In January 1997 he stepped down from the CEO position and a year later relinquished his Chairman role. He continued to serve as a Member of the Board until April 2003.
Exabyte enjoyed spectacular success during Mr. Behrendt’s leadership. Honors bestowed upon the organization include recognition by FORTUNE magazine as one of America’s 25 fastest growing public companies in 1991, 1992 and 1993 ( # 3 in 1991), an unprecedented two times selection as Colorado Company of the Year by the Rocky Mountain News, the Governor’s Trophy as Colorado’s outstanding exporter in 1995, and numerous other awards.
The company was funded by venture capital, grew through strategic partnerships with major corporations such as Sony and Kubota, and was taken public by Goldman Sachs and Montgomery Securities in 1989. While Mr. Behrendt was CEO, 1600 employees designed, manufactured, sold and serviced a broad line of products in Boulder, Scotland, Singapore, Sydney, Shanghai, Amsterdam, Germany and many other sites around the world. Strategic customers, among others, included computer manufacturers and distributors such as IBM, Sun, HP, DEC, Compaq, Siemens, Bull, Fujitsu and Hitachi.
Mr. Behrendt’s contributions to Exabyte, the storage industry and the local business and university communities have been recognized with many awards and frequent requests to share his insights. He was chosen Boulder Business Person of the Year and Colorado Business Person of the Year by several institutions, including the Boulder Chamber of Commerce, Colorado Magazine and the Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry. In 2008 he was inducted into the Boulder County Business Hall of Fame.
His speaking engagements, in addition to hundreds of presentations at industry and financial forums around the world, include several appearances at CEO conferences sponsored by FORTUNE magazine, five presentations to the Canadian CEO Association, video taped lectures at the US Chamber of Commerce for broadcasting to universities and businesses, the annual Poole Lecture at the University of Alberta, presentations at Denver University, Stanford’s Graduate Business School, the University of Southern California and the 1997 Commencement Address at the University of Colorado Business School. He likes to speak on diverse subjects such as creating a corporate culture, managing rapid growth, working with Boards of Directors, entrepreneurship, corporate rejuvenation and people management. His insights have been chronicled in various business magazines including FORTUNE, as well as numerous newspaper and trade press articles.
Today Mr. Behrendt is engaged in a wide variety of activities. He serves on the boards of Western Digital (a $8 Billion disk drive manufacturer with 30,000 employees in California, Malaysia and Thailand); InFocus of Portland, Oregon ( the world’s #1 brand in digital projectors); Virtela in Denver, Colorado ( a Virtual Private Network provider); manufacturer SMT Corporation in Shenzhen, China and is Chairman of ProStor Corporation in Boulder. In addition, he serves on the Advisory Boards of several internet, hardware and software startups as well as Wells Fargo/Norwest Bank. Since 1999 he has been a Venture Partner with NEA, one of the nation’s largest venture funds with $8.5 Billion in committed capital, which has funded over 550 companies around the world.
Previously he has served on the boards of CreekPath Systems ( a storage network management company); RainFinity ( a data management company sold to EMC); NanoMaterials Research; contract manufacturer EMS; the Wild Oats market chain; the Juran Quality Institute and was Chairman of Troika Networks, a provider of network switches. He was also a member of the Executive Committee of American Entrepreneurs for Economic Growth, the Boulder Economic Council, and served several terms as Chairman of the Advisory Board for the University of Colorado Business School. He has held the position of Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship in the School of Engineering at the University of Colorado.
Prior to joining Exabyte, and following a short stint as a US State Department “Goodwill Ambassador” to India, Mr. Behrendt spent 26 years at IBM in numerous executive positions. These included, among others, responsibility for business and product planning of IBM’s disk and tape drives, management of the worldwide multi-billion dollar Electronic Typewriter business, responsibility for the quality of most of IBM’s products and business processes and managing the marketing of IBM’s computers to the aerospace industry.
Mr. Behrendt grew up in East Germany and, following his escape, arrived in this country with a vocabulary of three words (chewing gum, cowboy and sweetheart). He graduated from UCLA with a degree in engineering.
