Business Week has a profile of Sky Dayton, the big Kahuna behind Earthlink, Boingo and Helio:
Riding the wave has always been Dayton’s forte. A onetime coffeehouse owner, he became a millionaire at 26 after launching Earthlink, an early and still active Internet service provider, then taking it public in 1997. Turbulence back then was when he got carded as he ordered a beer in Boston at the initial public offering road show that year.
But wipeouts followed, too: ECompanies, the incubator he started in 1999 with former Walt Disney Co. Internet honcho Jake Winebaum, became a symbol for dot-com busts after launching duds such as eParties.com and Icebox Inc.
Now 35 with three kids, the guy who once took meetings in sandals is back with a new mantra: wireless. Dayton heads two companies that are making high-risk bids to harness the radio waves. As chairman of one eCompanies venture, Boingo Wireless, he intends to build the nation’s largest operator of Wi-Fi hotspots, linking travelers at airports and hotels to the Internet.
He’s also CEO of Helio, a telephone operation he has imported from South Korea. Helio, which was launched in May, targets the under-30 crowd with superslick phones that surf the Web. They give users the ability to buy games and videos and share them with friends, including uploading them to a MySpace page.
The big idea behind both ventures is to use wireless technologies to connect folks who are constantly on the go, whether they’re clubbing or jet-hopping. These are no seat-of-the pants ventures, like Dayton’s credit card-funded Earthlink launch. His well-heeled Boingo investors include Sprint PCS and Mitsui. Five-year-old Boingo is nabbing hotspot deals, such as one in May to buy the operator of wireless services in 12 airports that include JFK and LaGuardia in New York.
Meanwhile, Helio’s co-owners, Earthlink and South Korean communications giant SK Telecom, have agreed to pump $440 million into its launch.
Both ventures have ties to Earthlink, where Dayton is still a major shareholder and board member with the clout that comes with being its original visionary. With its dial-up subscription business dwindling, Earthlink is going wireless: It has projects under way or planned to provide Wi-Fi services to cities such as New Orleans, San Francisco, and Anaheim, Calif.
Earthlink pays a small amount each year to license Boingo software for its existing wireless subscribers, and, down the road, Dayton sees a future where Helio might link with Earthlink’s wireless services to provide data downloads for cell-phone customers…
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