TASER International announced that Bret Taylor, the co-creator of Google Maps, CEO of Friendfeed, CTO of Facebook, and is now CEO of Quip, will be joining its Board of Directors. He brings extensive technology experience to the Company as TASER and its business unit EVIDENCE.com looks to accelerate growth in the wearable camera and cloud computing space for law enforcement. Taylor will be filling a board seat vacated by Dr. Matthew McBrady, who is retiring from the Board due to a new job in the financial industry, which precludes him from serving on the boards of public companies.
“We are pleased to welcome Bret Taylor to the TASER Board and look forward to his contributions to our strategy around growing our cloud and wearable tech business through our EVIDENCE.com brand,” said Rick Smith, CEO and founder of TASER. “Bret is widely recognized as a thought leader in software and online technologies, having created and/or led teams deploying some of the most widely used applications in the world.”
“TASER is applying technology to important social issues that I care deeply about,” said Bret Taylor. “I believe TASER is poised to revolutionize the public safety space with enhanced transparency from body-worn camera technology while leveraging the cloud to manage the massive data being generated by wearable cameras and sensors. I’m thrilled to be joining the TASER Board and look forward to contributing to the ongoing success of the Company.”
Bret Taylor served as Group Product Manager at Google Inc. until June 2007, where he co-created Google Maps and the Google Maps API. He then went on to become an entrepreneur-in-residence at Benchmark Capital where he founded the social network Friendfeed, Inc. with former Google employee, Jim Norris. Taylor was the CEO of FriendFeed until Facebook acquired the company in August 2009. Taylor was the CTO of Facebook until the summer of 2012 and supervised some of Facebook’s newest and most important products, including the creation of the Open Graph, the App Center, and its integration with the Apple App Store. He is now CEO and co-founder of Quip.
“Serving on the TASER Board has been one of the most fulfilling ventures of my professional career,” said Matthew McBrady. “It is a bittersweet goodbye to see such a talented successor join as I depart. I wish Bret and everyone at TASER a bright future and much success in changing the world again!”
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