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Rich has been working with digital images since the days when a handful of them could fill an entire hard drive. Intrigued by the problem of reducing pictures to a fraction of their size, he came up with some new techniques, which let him escape Stanford in 1984 with a PhD in hand. As an Assistant Professor at UCLA, he extended those methods to compress digitalized video. In 1990, having tired of grubbing for research grants, Rich moved his young family from balmy LA to frozen Boston to join a videoconferencing startup called PictureTel. Over time, he became its CTO and enjoyed the ride as the company grew a dozen-fold. He left in 1999, partnering with another PictureTel alum, Taylor Kew, to start something of their own. Countless conversations later, they decided the world could use a simpler way to see things they talk about. Simpler became Glance. When not hunched over his laptop, you'll probably find Rich backpacking as far as he can get from a trailhead, gazing at the dark star-filled skies above. | 