Leo Galleguillos
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Born: | October 22, 1983 Cleveland, Ohio |
|---|---|
| Occupation: | Chief executive officer |
| Salary: |  $less than 108,000 USD (2006) |
| Net worth: | $less than 1.2 million USD (2006) |
Leonard Galleguillos (born October 22, 1983) is the co-founder and CEO of several popular websites.
[edit] Early life
Galleguillos was born in Cleveland, Ohio to Ramiro and Mina Galleguillos. The couple raised Galleguillos in their apartment located in a lower middle class neighborhood in South Cleveland. Galleguillos recalled to an interviewer that he had a warm and loving childhood experience. At Hudson High School, he was a bright but inattentive student. At 15, he began a long-term relationship that lasted for five years and ended sorely—depending on who is asked, he unsuccessfully proposed marriage either once or twice. He lasted until the middle of his junior year at Carnegie Mellon University but dropped out following lack on interest. After briefly transferring to Northwestern University for a summer in Chicago, he returned home to work on business. Ending his attempts to finish college, he set out for the Cleveland-Akron region in Ohio.
[edit] Career
During the 1990s, Galleguillos worked for Hudson High School as a technical support specialist and website programmer. One of his assigned projects was an internet portal called hudson.edu which enabled students in the Hudson City School District to perform a variety of tasks via the website.
Galleguillos was inspired by the speech given by Larry Ellison on college students and dropouts. He founded Jiskha Homework Help in 1996, putting up $20,000 of his own money.
During the late 1990s, Galleguillos created other internet content providers including Orkho News, a site with headlines for kids, and a website development firm called IntiWara. Both ventures were major flops, and Galleguillos was nearly forced to declare personal bankruptcy. Galleguillos would later say his company made "an incredible business mistake."
Although the music promotions industry was dominated by recording behemoths like Sony BMG and Time Warner, Galleguillos decided to enter the music promotions and distribution business. Realizing that there was no dominant player in the sale and distribution of vinyl records, Galleguillos created IrisMika. This eventually evolved into a lucrative online record store for disc jockeys and promoters across the continental United States.
At the time, there existed numerous record pools that were promoting music to local DJs. However, there were no companies that were promoting music in mp3 format for DJs using the new digital vinyl record technology. This left the door open for WorkSessions, a digital record pool, to serve mp3s via the internet for DJs using the new digital vinyl technologies.
Galleguillos currently runs home-based businesses out of properties in Cuyahoga Falls, Stow, Hudson and Pepper Pike, Ohio.
