Stephen Hove displays unique entrepreneurial skills and talents, and has been instrumental in the development and promotion of a variety of start-up companies including Modern Business Associates, eSmokes.com, and NewHomes.com. In 1997, Mr. Hove was co-founder, and Chairman of the Board of Modern Business Associates (MBA), one of the nation’s largest professional employment organizations. Also, in 1997, Mr. Hove founded and was the CEO and Chairman of the Board of eSmokes, Inc., one of the pioneers of the internet which achieved sales of over $1m per week and had over $250m in online sales.
In 1998, Mr. Hove joined the founding team of the Inktomi Corporation (Nasdaq: INKT), which went public in the summer of 1998 and achieved a multi-billion dollar market capitalization, and became a partner in Strategic Acquisition Ventures, Ltd. (SAV), a technology incubator in Palo Alto, California that specialized in technology and internet investments. SAV’s initial start up was Yesmail.com (Nasdaq: YESM), which went public in 1999 and was then purchased by CMGI (Nasdaq: CMGI) for $650 million.
In 1999, Mr. Hove was a co-founder and executive officer of NewHomes.com, an on-line real estate company with several billion in gross sales. NewHomes.com was sold in 2006 for $40m to Alta Communications, a $1.5 billion private equity firm based in Boston, Massachusetts. In 2000, while residing in the heart of Silicon Valley, Mr. Hove became an initial investor in Silicon Valley Internet Capital (SVIC), and during this time, SVIC incubated and was the initial lead investor in Arcsight (Nasdaq: ARST), which went public in 2008 and is a leading enterprise internet security company. Kleiner Perkins and Intel Capital were co-investors in ArcSight. ArcSight was sold to Hewlett Packard for $1.5B in September 2010. In 2003, after leaving the Bay area, Mr. Hove co-founded Corporate Properties, a real estate development company, which was responsible for the construction and development of more than $500 million in commercial and residential real estate specializing in permitted subdivisions for National Home Builders and Grocery Anchored Shopping Centers for large regional grocery chain.
Mr. Hove began his career as a real estate developer in Florida, where he built and sold over $1billion in residential and commercial properties from 1985 through 1997. Mr. Hove is an alumnus of the University of Florida and a life loyal member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity.
Having worked as an entrepreneur in a variety of successful startup companies for the last thirty years, Mr. Hove has significant experience in starting new companies (“green fields”); joint ventures, real estate-related transactions; raising private equity and debt, and initiating, negotiating and consummating liquidity events.
