High Five: Meet Richard Daley, CEO Of Pentaho

Photograph by Eric Larson

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WHY ORLANDO WORKS "It's not as important to be in Silicon Valley when you're based on an open source business model. We have a very active developer community located throughout the world. If you look, JBoss is in Atlanta, Red Hat's in Raleigh, you'll see Digium over in Alabama. There's a bunch of successful open source companies that aren't based in the valley."

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ENDANGERED SPECIES Daley is one of a dying breed. "Nobody water-skis anymore. Wakeboarding's a lot more exciting for kids." Wakeboarding tricks like "rails," the "Superman," and backflips are fun to watch, but it's harder to discern water-skiing expertise as a spectator, he says.

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PIONEER DAYS Daley's been called a BI pioneer. "We were building dashboards on mainframes back in the mid-'80s. They would only go to a few elite members of the organization in the Fortune 500, who could afford these things."

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GOAL! Daley has four kids at home who love soccer. "It's constant--we're always traveling from one tournament to another. I'm actually one of the calm parents on the sideline versus the ones screaming and trying to coach the kids all the time. I let their coaches do that stuff; I'm there for support and encouragement."

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DOESN'T FEEL THE MAGIC Though Daley lives near Disney World, he doesn't get over there much. "We've probably been there just a couple times. It's kind of like another planet, so we avoid that side of town."