Jon Fisher

He is the CEO and a cofounder of augmented reality streaming start up, CrowdOptic. As co-inventor and co-founding CEO, Fisher built three companies including Bharosa—which produced the Oracle Adaptive Access Manager and sold to Oracle Corporation for a reported $50 million in 2007, NetClerk—now part of Roper Technologies and AutoReach—now part of AutoNation.

Fisher co-founded CrowdOptic, Inc. in 2011 with Jeff Broderick, Doug Van Blaricom and Alex Malinovsky. In April 2011, Fisher became the CEO of CrowdOptic. The company is known for its augmented reality technology in use in incident response, medicine and sports. Fisher chose to market CrowdOptic in professional sports first "because it was splashy." Wired magazine's Bruce Sterling wrote about CrowdOptic "I’ve never read a work of fiction or nonfiction that ever implied that such a technology might be possible. In 2016 Business Insider's Julie Bort wrote that "CrowdOptic, which makes a technology so cool, we've never seen anything like it." In 2017, a Silicon Review cover story featured Fisher and CrowdOptic's partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, including servers, hardware, and software to serve the intelligent live-streaming market.

In August 2009 at the Commonwealth Club of California, Fisher predicted U.S. unemployment would peak at not more than 10.4% before declining to 8.0% by end of 2010. Fisher stated the consumer's home may be the center of the U.S. and international economies, challenging The World Is Flat thesis by Thomas L. Friedman. Fisher has been an outspoken critic of the Treasury's bailout plans, saying "there are various techniques of restructuring that are familiar in the business world, none of which are being used by the government." However, Fisher wrote that "entrepreneurship should not be used to bludgeon the safety net."

Fisher is an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco. His book Strategic Entrepreneurism: Shattering the Start-Up Entrepreneurial Myths (2008) is required reading for the MBA program at several schools, including the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. The book is also one of three that was selected by the Ohio TechAngels for their project, which studied the timing and strategies involved in the sale of businesses, particularly those financed by angel investors.

Fisher is known for making accurate predictions about the U.S. economy, particularly unemployment rates. Fisher has commented that the drop in housing starts is a good indicator of the direction the unemployment rate is headed. He writes: "Historically, when new U.S. housing starts have plunged, unemployment has surged in the following year", concluding that he believes a linear correlation exists between national housing starts and national unemployment in times of severe recession. Fisher made one of the most accurate unemployment forecasts in U.S. history in April 2008 at Marquette University, where he predicted U.S. unemployment would rise to 9% by April 2009.

On Nov. 8, 2008, Fisher stated on National Public Radio that higher unemployment wouldn't increase foreclosures because there weren't many homeowners left who couldn't pay their mortgages, even without a job—although he thought they might not buy as many vehicles and other large purchases.

Fisher has served as a trustee of the Nueva School in Hillsborough, CA and was a member of their 2008 capital campaign team. He has served as a trustee of the Pacific Vascular Research Foundation in South San Francisco. Jon has served on the board of the Buck Institute For Age Research. Fisher was the commencement speaker in 2018 at University of San Francisco.

Fisher married Darla Kincheloe Fisher, owner of Koze clothing boutiques, in 2002, and their daughter was born in 2010. In an interview with Blasting News Fisher said that "It is good to have money and work hard, but even if I had the talent to make billions of dollars and it meant trading time with my family, I wouldn’t do it."

In 1994, Fisher cofounded and was Chief Executive Officer of AutoReach, now an AutoNation company. Former Oracle President and recent Hewlett Packard chairman Ray Lane was Fisher's first angel investor and also invested in two of Fisher's later start ups. In 1998, Fisher was the co-founder and CEO of the business software company, NetClerk, Inc., now part of Roper Technologies. The company is known for creating the online construction permit and as one of the first-ever SaaS companies. In 2001, Fisher teamed with the stars of the documentary film Startup.com, including Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, to help entrepreneurs restructure and wind down their companies. In 2004, Fisher cofounded and was Chief Executive Officer of Bharosa, which was acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2007.

Jon Fisher (born January 19, 1972) is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, investor, author, speaker, philanthropist and inventor. Fisher is known for advocating start-up acquisition strategy versus an IPO and is the author of Strategic Entrepreneurism: Shattering the Start-Up Entrepreneurial Myths.