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Ted Waitt, 41, is chairman of Gateway, Inc., the company he co-founded 1985 with a $10,000 loan guarantee from his grandmother and a revolutionary idea to deal directly with customers and build computers to individual specifications.
Ted first set up shop in his family’s Sioux City, Iowa farm house and helped change the computer industry forever with the build-to-order, direct-to-consumer model. Built on the belief that technology holds the power to improve people’s lives, Gateway set out to take the fear and intimidation out of the computer-buying experience. With Ted at the helm, Gateway rose quickly to become a Fortune 500 company and the world’s third-largest vendor of PCs.
True to Ted’s innovative and risk-taking leadership style, Gateway continued to lead the computer industry by becoming the first PC manufacturer to sell its own consumer electronics with the launch of the Gateway Plasma TV and over 75 other Gateway-branded CE products in 2002.
Along the way, Ted and Gateway became known for something just as important: honesty, integrity, and unmatched customer service. Gateway has received awards as one of America’s most admired companies and continually ranks at the top of the industry in customer loyalty.
Ted served as Chairman and CEO of Gateway from 1985 to 1999 and then again from 2001 until March 2004. In March 2004, Gateway acquired eMachines and Ted chose to serve as chairman of the Board of Directors. Today, Ted is a full time entrepreneur and philanthropist. On the business front, he is Chairman and CEO of the Avalon Capital Group, his pr
ivate equity company that invests in companies and ventures in numerous sectors of the economy from entertainment to energy to real estate.
His Waitt Family Foundation, started in 1993, is built in the image of its founder: innovative, compassionate, revolutionary. It seeks to support causes that help us understand our past, improve the present, and prepare for the future. The Foundation has supported efforts to bring technology to underserved communities, schools and non-profit organizations in an effort to help bridge the “digital divide”.
More recently, Ted serves as the chairman of the Founding Fathers campaign of the Family Violence Prevention Fund, just one of the efforts that he supports in the fight to prevent domestic violence. The Foundation has donated more than $35 million since its founding 10 years ago.
Over the years, Ted has earned a number of prestigious honors, including the Young Entrepreneur of the Year award from the U.S. Small Business Association, an honorary doctorate of science degree from the University of South Dakota, and the Ten Outstanding Young Americans (TOYA) award from the United States Junior Chamber of Commerce. He was appointed by Congress to serve on the Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce and has served on numerous other corporate and philanthropic Boards of Directors.
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