A fax machine is a demanding correspondent. It wants a telephone line, paper and a place to sit. Rudy Prince helped build a business around a more accommodating arrangement: let the fax arrive in your inbox. The sender could carry on as before. The receiver could dispense with a small, temperamental piece of office furniture.
That change made Prince part of the early internet’s experiment with free services and paying customers. It also makes a useful starting point for a career that has passed through mainframes, printer electronics, embedded Linux, wireless routers, iPhone calls and semiconductor finance. Read in sequence, these jobs suggest a recurring business question: what happens to people whose equipment has failed to keep up with the next announcement?
A mechanical engineer goes into sales
Prince studied mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, graduating with highest honors. His first career stop was IBM’s Data Processing Division, where he worked in marketing. He subsequently spent five years at Digicon in sales management and corporate development. Its computer and communications products served oil exploration, a market in which technology had to earn its place inside an existing operation.
At Entropic Speech, he became vice president of marketing and launched voice and facsimile products. This was a commercial education across several layers of computing: selling systems, developing a business and introducing communications equipment. By the time he co-founded JetFax in 1988, he had worked on the practical business of getting unfamiliar technology bought.
JetFax initially developed fax technology for other manufacturers. That position gave Prince a particular view of the office: the badge on a machine and the company responsible for its workings could be different. A product could reach a customer under somebody else’s name. The engineering still had to perform.
The name on the box was somebody else’s
A 1994 agreement with Xerox put JetFax’s responsibilities in unusually concrete terms: hardware designs, mechanical designs, software and component lists for a fax product built around a Xerox printer mechanism. It was a business of fitting parts together, with obligations extending well beyond an appealing demonstration. The paperwork included prototypes, acceptance procedures and documentation.
The following year, JetFax signed a development and supply agreement with Samsung. The proposed machine combined a laser printer, fax, scanner and copier. JetFax would develop controller electronics and software, supply custom chips and license its intellectual property. Four office jobs would share one enclosure. Behind that compact promise sat a rather less compact arrangement of design, manufacturing and licensing responsibilities.
There was another route into the customer’s office, too. In September 1998, FaxBack licensed JetFax’s portable document technology for fax-server and messaging software. The point was recognizability: a document should arrive looking the way its sender intended, whether delivered as a fax image or an email attachment. JetFax and FaxBack also planned to connect JetFax multifunction machines to the software and service.
These arrangements matter to Prince’s story because they establish what his company already possessed before its internet reinvention: electronics, software and experience connecting one manufacturer’s product to another company’s system. The fax-to-email service grew out of a working technology business.
JetFax goes public.
The internet service comes later.
A free number changes the proposition
JetFax went public in 1997. The next year brought a problem: royalties from an HP LaserJet project were falling short of expectations. Prince and his colleagues looked for another way to grow. Their answer was to move incoming faxes onto the internet and give the receiving service away.
By May 1999, the renamed eFax.com said 500,000 people had obtained its free software and a fax number. Servers received incoming documents and forwarded them to email. Premium services would supply a route to revenue. A number outside the receiver’s area could mean a toll call for the sender; free receiving had its small print.
“We had to do something else to grow our business,” Prince explained. There is something refreshingly ordinary about that sentence. The company had encountered a disappointing result and was trying another approach. During the same period, he came across as informal and patient, taking interview questions without notes or accompanying staff.
The future, in this account, arrives with adapters.
A career across technology’s handovers
By December 1999, the service was reaching the UK. Users could receive both faxes and voicemail as email attachments on a UK number. Sending carried a charge, and advertising supplied another revenue opportunity. Prince was also discussing mobile access through work with Phone.com. The inbox was becoming a place to collect communications that had previously required different equipment.
The commercial wager was easy to understand and difficult to settle: attract people with useful free receiving, then find services they would pay for. The UK expansion also showed how much of this supposedly weightless internet business still depended on telephone numbers and local communications arrangements. Removing a machine from a desk left plenty of infrastructure elsewhere.
The merger, and the work after it
The eFax transaction belongs to the less comfortable part of the internet story. In July 2000, Jfax and eFax signed a merger agreement involving 13 million Jfax shares, valued then at about $23.4 million. That was an announcement value tied to a share price, rather than a cash payment to Prince.
The acquisition closed on November 29, 2000. Later company accounts recorded an $8.2 million purchase price, including shares, warrants and acquisition costs. Keeping those figures distinct avoids turning a changing stock transaction into an imaginary personal payday. The service’s continuation and an individual founder’s proceeds are separate questions.
Prince’s next documented leadership appointment came that November at RidgeRun, where he became CEO and chairman. Rick Seger joined as vice president of business development. The new work concerned embedded Linux software for products using digital signal processors. Prince had moved from a service people could register for to software most end users would never encounter by name.
In December 2001, Texas Instruments and RidgeRun announced a Linux development suite for TI’s system-level processors. It combined RidgeRun’s operating system and board-support software with the chips. Developers building connected equipment were the audience; voice recognition, wireless data and industrial control were among the possible applications.
Prince’s pitch concerned reducing debugging and getting products to market sooner. That is a different sales conversation from offering a free fax number, but it has a familiar practical center. A customer needs several pieces to work together before the promised convenience can become a product.
Wi-Fi for the people still dialing in
Always On Wireless followed. Prince founded the Houston startup in 2003, and its WiFlyer addressed an unfashionable combination: wireless laptops and dial-up internet. A telephone connection might still be slow, but its user did not necessarily want to remain physically attached to it.
By September 2004, broadband had overtaken dial-up among US home internet users. Prince nevertheless saw a customer group for the WiFlyer. The router included a V.92 modem and could also connect to broadband. Its design treated dial-up as an intended use, where some competing equipment treated it as a backup arrangement. Wireless convenience did not have to wait for a different connection.
Raising money for it supplied another lesson. Prince had obtained $500,000 in angel funding for JetFax in 1988. For Always On, he and his partners put in about $200,000 before a group of former telecom entrepreneurs invested $1 million in 2004. Investors wanted more evidence and a quicker route to an exit than the nine years JetFax’s early backers had waited for its public offering.
Prince valued more than the money. “They have a real interest in seeing you do well,” he said of angel investors. By April 2006, Always On had an arrangement with Microsoft to offer WiFlyer to MSN Dial-Up subscribers for $79.95. A customer base that looked dated from one angle was still a distribution opportunity from another.
The conference call loses a few steps
With Callvine, Prince returned to the nuisance of arranging a conversation. In August 2010, its iPhone app let users choose address-book contacts for group calls and texts. It supported calls with up to 20 people and offered limited free calling followed by paid minutes. An address book could become a gathering place with fewer invitations and less individual dialing.
By March 2012, Callvine was using TurboBridge’s conferencing platform. The app offered high-definition audio, live conference controls and group management. Wi-Fi allowed participants to connect through internet calling. The host could see and manage the conversation from the phone instead of relying entirely on the rituals of a conventional conference line.
In June, Prince described another useful detail of the arrangement: TurboBridge’s API gave Callvine control over individual calls while handling connection complexities underneath. Choosing an outside platform let his company concentrate on its application. It was another division of labor between the experience a customer sees and the machinery required to deliver it.
From communications to sensing - and advice
By June 2021, Prince was CFO of Austin semiconductor company SigmaSense. His work had helped it raise more than $25 million and allocate resources. That month, group-rideshare startup Fetii appointed him to its advisory board to help with fundraising and financial strategy. The software entrepreneur was now also being recruited for experience in explaining a business and financing its development.
His SigmaSense work also involved a 2021 investment and partnership with VIA optronics. The companies planned touch solutions for automotive, industrial and consumer displays. Prince described completing the financing against a tight deadline across time zones. Here the connection was between a company developing sensing technology and a display partner with reasons to help bring it into products.
In April 2024, Prince participated with SigmaSense at TSMC’s Technology Symposium. His public activity has also highlighted the company’s work with Zebra rugged tablets and its Taiwan team. These are specific signs of continuing interest in getting technology into customers’ equipment, a concern recognizable from the JetFax years.
A reading of the career emerges from those products rather than from a declaration of philosophy. Prince has repeatedly worked where technologies meet: fax and email, chips and Linux, dial-up and Wi-Fi, phones and conference systems. Each meeting has customers, costs and inconvenient details. The future, in this account, arrives with adapters. Somebody still has to make them work.