Kent Ertugrul
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Kent Ertugrul was Interim Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Phorm Inc., a Delaware corporation.[1] He resigned from the Phorm Corporation board on 15 July 2015.[2] Phorm ceased trading on 14 April 2016, having burnt through £200 million of investors' capital.[3]
MiGs, Etc.
Ertugrul began his career in investment banking, working at J.P. Morgan, Credit Suisse First Boston and Morgan Stanley in London, helping to develop and distribute Inflation Linked Floating Rate Securities.[4] Later, as Director and Chief Financial Officer, he oversaw the growth of Compass Technology as it became a leading PC-based voice mail company in the US. In 1991, Compass merged with California-based Octel Communications, which in turn was acquired by Lucent Technologies.[5]
In 1990, Ertugrul was introduced to a MiG test pilot. The pilot offered Ertugrul a test flight, and from that flight, MiGs, Etc. was born - a joint venture with the Russian Air Force and the Russian Space Agency, which offered joy rides to tourists in Mig-29 jet fighters.[6] Ertugrul put a one-inch square advert in the Wall Street Journal which read "Fly a MiG 29 over Moscow." The company was inundated with 450 press inquiries within 24 hours, gaining worldwide media attention for commercializing the end of the Cold War.[7] Later, Ertugrul founded Life.com, a desktop software and online interactive diary, as well as Voxster, a company enabling Instant Messaging for email.[4]