In their Millennium 100 list, San Jose Mercury News named Regis McKenna one of the 100 people who made Silicon Valley what it is today. McKenna helped launch some of the most important technological innovations of the last thirty years including the first microprocessor (Intel Corporation), the first personal computer (Apple Computer), the first recombinant DNA genetically engineered product (Genentech, Inc.), and the first retail computer store (The Byte Shop).

McKenna founded his high tech marketing firm, Regis McKenna, Inc., in Silicon Valley in 1970 after working in the marketing departments of two early semiconductor-pioneering companies. The firm evolved from a high tech marketing support business focused on high tech start-ups to a broad based marketing strategy firm servicing international clients in many different industries. McKenna retired as an active partner in the firm in 2000.  McKenna and his firm worked with a number of entrepreneurial start-ups during their formation years including: America Online, Apple, Compaq, Electronic Arts, Genentech, Intel, Linear Technology, Lotus, Microsoft, National Semiconductor, Silicon Graphics, 3COM, and many others. 

McKenna has consulted on strategic marketing and business issues to industrial, consumer, transportation, healthcare and financial firms in the United States, Japan, and Europe. Through most of the 1980’s, he was the only non-employee to serve on Apple’s Executive Management Staff.

McKenna has also been an active investor in high tech entrepreneurial companies for the past 30 years and was a General Partner of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.  As an angel investor, he has provided seed financing to Weblogic, the first application server, and helped build that company’s management team. BEA acquired Weblogic in 1998. McKenna also was co-founder of BroadWare Technology. The company developed and marketed a high-availability video server and was acquired by Cisco in 2007.

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