Ciaran Foley’s Biography
Ciaran is best known as a Southern California-based serial entrepreneur and Chair Emeritus of Tech Coast Venture Network, a OC-Based non-profit dedicated to helping entrepreneurs succeed.
Ciaran was born in Dublin, Ireland and raised on the East and West Coasts of the United States. He learned to program in BASIC when he was 7, thanks to a strategically purchased TRS-80 Model III intended to ween him off of an ever-growing addiction to the Atari 2600 videogame Chopper Command. At 11, Ciaran went on to start his first software company and netted $75 in sales over the course of 3 months.
It wasn’t exactly an IPO, but it was a start.
During high school, his musical interests included playing tenor sax in Jazz Band, clarinet in Orchestra and conducting the Marching Band as Drum Major. These activities, along with the band uniform and an overt interest in technology (and appointment to a district panel advising on classroom technology) only enhanced Ciaran’s rapidly burgeoning reputation as a ladies man geek.
In 1996 – in spite of a tragically flawed academic record and an allergy to recursion and LISP, Ciaran was generously awarded a B.S. in Computer Science from U.C. Irvine.
The year prior to his graduation, Ciaran had launched his own fledgling venture – a small consultancy that was to become his vocation for the next ten years. With its humble beginnings as a sole-proprietership web design company in the midst of the dot-com boom, it soon grew into a business solutions company serving some 400 clients, including the ALS Association, Edison Stadium, Hughes Raytheon, Disney, Mothers, NTT/Verio, Mail Boxes, Etc., TownHall LA, Buena Vista Television, and more. The company was recognized as one of AT&T’s Top 5 Western Region business partners in 1998 and was the leader of a consortium of companies in the Southern California area that included Cable & Wireless, 3Com, Data Return, Checkpoint Software, Absolute Software and others. The company exhibited at Comdex in Las Vegas, but truthfully, all that came of that was sore feet and a lack of sleep.
In late 1999, along with two partners, Ciaran successfully raised US$2MM for a second venture – a fledgling security aggregation dot-com startup backed by Farmer’s Insurance and a major Los Angeles law firm. Only weeks later, the devastating market crash of 2000 took their funding with it.
As an independent entrepreneur, Ciaran has founded or served as an equity partner in several companies holding positions as CEO, COO or Board Member and has participated in advisory, project management, fundraising, business development, technical, sales and marketing roles. He also ran a blog (prior to rolling it up into this site) called LookSee.TV and has hosted a number of podcasts and interview video shows both online and on terrestrial radio. Ciaran also ran a real-life networking group in Orange County called OneDegreeOC in 2004 that grew to over 1,000 members.
Ciaran has been twice nominated for The Ernst & Young, LLP Orange County Entrepreneur of the Year Award and was recipient of the Bank of America Award in Computer Science. He has served on the Boards of Directors of the Advertising Production Association of Orange County (APAOC), WebWiseKids, DiscoveryArts, the California Branch of the National Association for Missing and Exploited Children and The Entrepreneurship Institute.
He’s even competed in a number of triathlons. Though you’d never know it to look at him.
Ciaran is currently working stealthily on a top-secret startup and serves as the Chairman Emeritus of the Board at Tech Coast Venture Network. You can visit his LinkedIn profile to see how many people he’s paid to say nice things about him.
Learn more about projects he’s been involved with, talks he’s done or working with him.