For more than 30 years, Jim Marggraff has dedicated his energy, vision, and inventiveness to developing standards, applications, technology and products for companies committed to creating innovative solutions, improving learning, and advancing human creativity, curiosity, and communication.
In 2019, Jim started his seventh company as a co-founder of Kinoo, to create the best possible future for children, their families, and the world through connection, play and learning. The company’s first product was a new form of augmented reality, artificial intelligence-enhanced, video-chat-based, embodied learning co-play, to help families with the well-being, learning, and development of children by providing experiences for success in life. Kinoo is now creating a platform to revolutionize reading and learning with audio, visual, and kinesthetic learning with plain paper media. Jim is Kinoo’s Chairman and CEO. Kinoo won 1st Place in the 2021 AARP Innovation Labs’ Pitch Competition as start-up of the year.
Most recently, Jim worked as a Director in Google’s Virtual and Augmented Reality division, following the sale of Eyefluence, founded by Jim, to Google in 2016. Eyefluence was the sixth company that Jim founded/co-founded in 2013, to develop technology that transforms intent into action through your eyes. With Eyefluence technology, a person wearing a head-mounted display (HMD) such as Google Glass, Oculus, or other HMDs, could interact with the display, and control or interact with objects in their world, simply by moving their eyes, with no waiting, no winking, just looking. In addition to supporting neurotypical individuals, Jim and his team worked with people with neurological disabilities, such as ALS, to improve their life-conditions through access to knowledge and communication using solely their eyes. They also developed a new language for human interaction, described as “The Language of Looking”.
Prior to founding Eyefluence, in 2007, Jim founded Livescribe, as the inventor of the world’s first smartpen. Under Jim’s guidance, Livescribe sold over 2 million smartpens in more than 40 countries, to create a global brand for a new product category. The smartpen addressed the issue facing all people who take written notes to capture and share information — “Do I listen, or do I write?”. Smartpens have been adopted by journalists, authors, movie directors, lawyers, salespeople, teachers, students, researchers, artists, doctors, patients, and virtually anyone who takes notes. Further, it changed the lives of everyday students and provided critical assistance to special-ed students, including helping those with dyslexia, as well as changing the lives of people with PTSD.
Jim’s idea for a smartpen developed during his 7 years at LeapFrog, as he continued to consider how to help people of all ages with their acquisition of knowledge. Jim had sold his previous company, Explore Technologies, to LeapFrog in 1998, where he helped grow LeapFrog from $31 million to $680 million annual sales in five years. As the inventor of the world-renowned LeapPad Learning System, Jim’s dedication to technology-based learning helped LeapFrog sell over $1 billion of LeapPads and educational content worldwide in less than 5 years. Jim’s voice, as a lead voice-over talent for LeapFrog, greeted users of tens of millions of LeapPads. The LeapPad ultimately impacted more than 100 million children and adults in reading, math, and language skills, and sparked and fueled a passion for lifelong learning for people around the globe.
Beyond the consumer market for the LeapPad, LeapFrog Schoolhouse quickly became the fastest growing educational enterprise in the world, based upon its sales of LeapPad and the LeapTrack Learning System.
At LeapFrog, Jim also conceived of the Fly Pentop Computer, to help tweens (pre-teens) acquire knowledge, and advance their skills in science, math, reading, writing, language, history. In 2005, the “Fly Pentop Computer” that Jim created at LeapFrog, won the “Most Innovative Toy of the Year”, the “Most Educational Toy of the Year”, and the overall “Toy of the Year”, an unprecedented number of “TOTY” awards for a single product.
Jim is a prolific speaker, with 2 presentations on the TED main stage, a UNLV TEDx talk, and a presentation at Rotary’s 2018 International’s Annual Convention, All Things Digital, DEMO, Future in Review, the Milken Global Economic Conference, the Aspen Ideas Festival, Bloomberg TV, JavaOne, Building 43, Dust Or Magic, AdAge’s IDEA Conference, CM Summit, the Director’s Guild of America, The E.G. Conference, TTI/Vanguard, Imagine Solutions, Ciudad de las Ideas, Columbia Business School, MIT, numerous Rotary District Conferences, and many other local and global events featuring thought-leaders and innovators.
Jim’s entrepreneurialism and innovations have been covered by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Financial Times, The Telegraph, Herald Tribune, SF Chronicle, SJ Mercury News, The Atlantic Monthly, Wired, Time, Fortune, Technology Review, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, Business Week, CNet, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Oprah, Good Morning America, The Today Show, Cavuto, QVC, Bloomberg, CNN, FOX, and hundreds of other periodicals, blogs, and broadcast media.
From 1999-2010, products created by Jim received hundreds of awards from around the world, including multiple “Toy of the Year” awards from the Toy Industry of America. In 2004, Jim was recognized by the American Diabetes Association and Father’s Day Council of San Francisco as “Father of the Year”.
In June 2011, Jim received Ernst & Young’s “Entrepreneur of the Year” award for the Northern California region, and was inducted into the Entrepreneur of the Year “Hall of Fame”. Jim has subsequently become a judge for this program. Also in 2011, Jim’s LeapPad invention was also listed in the “MIT 150” – the top 150 inventions and contributions from MIT graduates.
On a local, community level, Jim is active in his home town of Lafayette, with the Lamorinda Sunrise Rotary Club, and supports the local public school system with technology donations. In 2017, Jim led Rotary International’s adoption of VR with a new concept he called a “VR-a-Thon”. Jim drove the financing, and was Executive Producer of a VR piece, One Small Act, produced in Romania, focused on polio eradication and the elimination of violence as a means of conflict resolution. This piece was experienced by over 3,000 Rotarians simultaneously at Rotary’s Annual World Conference in Atlanta in June 2017, setting a world record for the largest co-located viewing of a VR piece, and will be distributed globally to Rotarians, along with a new VR Rotary-produce piece, Two Drops of Patience, for World Polio Day in 2018.
In 2019, Jim co-founded a Rotarian 501(c)(3), The Global Impact Group (TGIG.org) with a focus on “Rotarians Connecting Rotarians with Technology”. In 2020, with TGIG.org, Jim conceived and Executive Produced videos introducing Virtual-In Person / Hybrid meetings and technology to Rotary clubs globally. The video and technology were endorsed by the 2020-2021 President of Rotary International, Holger Knaack. Filmed as a hybrid meeting, Jim recruited, interviewed, and time-shifted in Rotary-focused commentary on polio-eradication and COVID from Dr. Anthony Fauci, US NAID, Dr. Anita Zaidi, The Gates Foundation, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, The World Health Organization, Dr. Seth Berkeley, CEO GAVI, Dr. Sten Vermund, Dean of Yale School of Public Health, and others. In 2022, Jim and TGIG.org helped conceive and develop the first Innovative Technology Zone at Rotary’s 2022 Annual World Conference.
Pursuing a new approach to world connection and peace, in 2020, Jim joined the leadership team of the non-profit, One Shared World, as an inaugural signatory of OSW’s Declaration of Interdependence.
As another channel for his passion for innovation and founding, Jim wrote a book, “How to Raise a Founder with Heart”, comprising stories, science and suggestions for “founding” to parents who would like to instill a founder’s mindset, and skills, in their children. His book was published in 2018 and recognized as one of the top books for startup founders and first-time entrepreneurs by Forbes.
Jim is also a board member of the Gleason Foundation, supporting former New Orleans Saints football player, Steve Gleason, a person with ALS, in Steve’s fight against the disease and a public inspiration to others with disabilities. Jim joined Steve to speak at the UN in 2013 on the topic of startups addressing disabilities.
Jim received his SB and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, and holds more than 60 issued patents.