Directory:Jeffery D. Stein

Jeffery Stein is an entrepreneur best known as the founder and CEO of On-Line Business Systems, Inc., an information technology information services firm located in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, and later was the founder and CEO of Peyton Investments, Inc. [1]

Early Life

Mr. Stein was born in Ohio and spent his summers in his teen years going to California where he eventually moved to San Francisco in 1961. He attended Ohio State University.

Personal Life

He is married to Peyton Stein of Philadelphia and lives in Marin County, California. They have three grown children. [2]

Early Career

Prior to entering the computer industry in 1961, Mr. Stein during his formative years had paper routes, worked in a bowling alleys, was a cook for a fast food restaurant, sold shoes, and was assistant manager a 350 room hotel called Tahoe Tavern Resort in Tahoe City, California.

Information Technology and Investment Banking Career

In 1960, at Ohio State University, he started is career in the information industry. While at college extra income was needed by waiting on tables in fraternity houses. An ad appeared in the local college paper looking for a computer operator at Battelle Memorial Institute. At that time Mr. Stein thought computers were going to make major paradigm shift in everyone’s lives that he wanted the computer operator position so badly that even though the he needed the funds, he offered to work at the Institute and he would pay them hourly as expression of his desire for the position. He was offered the computer operator position for $1.50 per hour as an operator of an IBM 650 computer.

Later positions included computer programming, systems analysis, sales, marketing, and financial positions in emerging companies located in San Francisco, London, Paris, and Geneva.

On-Line Business Systems, Inc.

It became apparent to Mr. Stein, the computer field was about to go through another major shift in the use of computers. He felt that a migration was about to begin from batch processing to all real time online transaction processing. In 1969, in San Francisco with a $2,000 investment and the help of many credit cards, he founded On-Line Business Systems, Inc. to offer online real time business data process services to mid size companies.

OBS’s first customer was build a passenger reservation system for Princess Cruises. As CEO of OBS, the company grew from 2 employees to 250, servicing over 2,000 clients, and which became the largest privately held information process company west of the Mississippi River, all over a 20 year period. OBS completed four acquisitions as a part of their expansion program.

OBS had eight divisions -

• Venture Capital
• Online Transaction Processing
• Batch Processing
• Systems and Programming
• Financial Portfolio Software
• Productivity Software
• Data Gathering
• Public Telephone Accounting

In 1989, OBS was sold to ACS Corporation of Dallas, Texas.

Convene International

In 1993, Mr. Stein felt another information technology revolution was forthcoming, the Internet. Convene.com was formed to allow affinity groups of individuals who were geographically disbursed to communicate on a regular basis in an asynchronous mode.

Early groups to use the service were 15,000 ministers of various faith groups such as the Presbyterians, Methodists, Anglicans, Episcopals, and 15 other religious groups. Also, franchise, international companies, and non profits were other types of organizations to use the convene.com service.

Online classrooms for working adults needed the same characteristics that the convene service was offering. The first major client to offer the convene.com service was the University of Phoenix Online Campus. Once UOP was established convene.com added over 100 colleges and universities serving over 45,000 online students that were primarily working adults.

Peyton Investments, Inc.

In 2000, Mr. Stein formed Peyton Investments, Inc. [3] which is located in Marin County. With the many successful years as a CEO of technology companies, he turned his focus to a full complement of advisory services for emerging companies. The services are CEO coaching and mentoring, mergers, acquisitions (rollups), technology consulting, turnarounds, financial restructuring, strategic planning and private investing in technology companies.

Recent transactions have included raising funds for two software acquisitions, completion a series of acquisitions to double the revenues of a services firm, assisting with the planning of distribution company to multiply their revenue by 9 times in 20 months, serve on over 6 boards and advisory boards, advisory to several technology startups, acted as an expert witness, engaged in several technology projects to open new markets, mentored several CEOs in growing their business, and arranged for specific strategic partnerships.

Board Memberships and Professional Affiliations

• Director, Aero Astro, Inc. [4]
• Director, Lotto Captain
• Director, Active Health Solutions [5]
• Chairman of the Board, IT History Society [6]
• Member, Committee on the Present Danger [7]
• Board of Advisors, LetterClick.com [8]
• Board of Advisors, portcard.net [9];
• Alumni, Young Presidents Organization (YPO) [10]
• Governor, International Council for Computer Communications
• Treasurer, Dawn Redwood Trust
• Member, World Presidents Organization Northern California Chapter (WPO) [11]
• Secretary Treasurer, World Presidents Organization Northern Chapter (2004-2006)]
• Member, Keiretsu Forum (angel investing group) [12]
• Director, Laguna Honda Hospital Volunteers, Inc. (1999-2004);