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Richard J. Christiansen

  David I Fishman
Engineer turned entrepreneur, Rich Christiansen has taken his years of experience with companies such as Mitsubishi Electric, About.com and Novell, and built many successful companies of his own. Under the name The Storm Group, he has built and managed multiple businesses, including Cyclone Trading, EggNesters, Tornado Solutions and Mountain Grabbers. Most recently, he has partnered with Ron Porter in building Everest Web SEO, an emerging search engine optimization company currently experiencing rapid growth and success. Everest Web SEO helps large east coast corporations establish a high profile search engine presence. With all of this, Rich’s true passion and talent is in the startup and launch of technology oriented companies. He is currently writing a book with Ron, making their years of experience accessible to entrepreneurs looking for advice on starting their own companies.

Rich gained notoriety with his successes at Mitsubishi Electric. He ran the United States operations for Mitsubishi Electric PC Division acting as general manager. He opened the US market for Mitsubishi which grew from startup to $25 million in annual sales in two years.

Rich also experienced success as the general manager of About Web Services, a profitable division of About, Inc. About is the seventh largest traffic driver on the Web. In this capacity, the division increased subscription revenue from $400,000 a month to $600,000 a month. The paid subscriber base was grown from 40,000 to over 62,000, and the monthly cash was increased from $400,000 per month to $740,000 per month. This was done while maintaining a contribution margin of 61%. This business was recently acquired by United Online, who also owns Juno and NetZero.

With a strong background in network engineering, Rich spent seven years at Novell in management, marketing and engineering capacities including product line manager of NDS, product line manager of Novell Cross Platform Services, and four years in strategic engineering in the Novell Labs Division. While at Novell, he was one of a few certified Novell instructors and was the fifth Enterprise Certified Novell engineer.

Rich earned his MBA and a BS in electronic engineering technology from Brigham Young University. He is active in community and religious service as well as humanitarian efforts. He is an avid high altitude trekker and a golfer. Rich and his wife Gaye are the parents of five sons and are the legal guardians of an adopted daughter from Nepal.
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