Poly Inc.

Poly, formerly Polycom, a part of HP Inc., is an American multinational corporation that develops video, voice and content collaboration and communication technology. Polycom was co-founded in 1990 by Brian L Hinman and Jeffrey Rodman. In 2018 Polycom was acquired by Plantronics and in 2019 the name of the combined entity was changed to Poly. In 2022, it was sold onwards to HP. Polycom was co-founded in 1990 by Brian L Hinman and Jeffrey Rodman, who were colleagues at PictureTel Corp. The startup was based in San Francisco, California but soon moved to San Jose, California, with Hinman using $400,000 of his own money and$100,000 from friends as seed money. Oak Investment Partners and Accel Partners then contributed an additional $3 million in venture capital. Polycom's stated goal was to develop solutions for all the major ways people communicate, specifically including audio, content such as documents, and video. Its first products to market were audio conferencing speaker phones. The company later added content sharing, video conferencing, video network and bridging, and system monitoring and management products. Brian Hinman served as CEO from the company's founding in 1990 until 1998, when he was succeeded by Bob Hagerty. Hagerty was succeeded by Andy Miller in 2010. At Polycom, Miller was with several expense and accounting violations by the SEC in 2012, and settled with the SEC by agreeing to not serve as an officer for any company for five years. Miller left Polycom after being paid$24 million USD in compensation. He was succeeded as CEO by Peter Leav, who was then succeeded in 2016 by Mary McDowell following Polycom's acquisition by Siris Capital Group. The firm employed approximately 3,800 employees in 2014. In 2015, Polycom cut 15% of its workforce after posting large dips in sales. Polycom reported revenues of $1.3 billion for the year of 2015. Peter Leav at that point was both president and CEO, and Laura Durr was chief financial officer and executive vice president (EVP).