John has spent over 20 years providing legal and business advice to those companies that develop or use technology in their business. John has spent time with a major law firm, successful startups and Fortune 500 technology companies.

John graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota in 1979. John received his J.D. degree from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1982.

John started his legal career with Texas Instruments in Dallas, Texas. While working at “TI” John prepared and negotiated hundreds of software/technology licensing, distribution, teaming and joint venture agreements and assisted the General Counsel with annual reports, Form 10-Ks and the annual meeting of shareholders.

In 1985 John left TI to join a telecommunication start-up in Plano, Texas, DSC Communications Corporation. DSC created a family of switching, transmission and local access products that brought digital technology to the newly deregulated telecommunication industry. In John’s nine years at DSC, the company grew from 200 employees and no revenue to 5,000 employees and over a $1B in annual revenues. While at DSC John led the team that prepared a successful $250M secondary offering of DSC stock; served as co-leader of the strategic planning unit responsible for mergers and acquisitions; and negotiated commercial agreements with Motorola, Nokia, all of the Regional Bell Operating Companies, Cable & Wireless, British Telecom, MCI and Sprint.

John returned to the Twin Cities in 1995 and joined the law firm of Leonard, Street and Deinard. During John’s tenure as shareholder at this law firm he helped create the Internet and e-commerce practice group; brought more than thirty Internet based clients to the firm; and represented start-ups and Fortune 500 clients with Internet, e-commerce, information technology and telecommunications issues.

In 2000 John joined Internet software pioneer Net Perceptions as General Counsel. While at Net Perceptions John helped the company complete a $150M dollar acquisition and an $80M secondary public offering; filed the company’s first ever SEC reports; was responsible for company’s first Annual Meeting; established international subsidiaries; created intellectual property protection procedures; and prepared standard sales, licensing and purchasing documents.

Between 2002 and 2006 John served as Deputy General Counsel at ValueVision Media, Inc., a publicly traded company owned in part by NBC and General Electric. ValueVision operates the nation’s third largest home shopping television network -- ShopNBC -- a television network that provides live television programming 7x24 into 65 million homes. While at ShopNBC John served as chief counsel for the company’s $200M dollar internet based retail business. John also provided legal advice on various corporate activities and was responsible for legal support of business development activities e.g. $15M acquisition of web retail company and $35M acquisition of a television station.