Keith Krach, former undersecretary of state and current billionaire entrepreneur, first started working at his father’s Ohio mechanics shop when he was 12. As he worked alongside his father, those valuable lessons his father imparted became the principles by which Krach has conducted business, from the time he was the youngest vice president of GM to his Silicon Valley ventures. They also inspired the goal Krach wanted to achieve during his time in public service: propelling America’s tech innovations so that she can continue to be the world’s foremost economic power.
Krach’s father and uncle were World War II veterans who were proud to serve their country. “They love telling stories about how America’s manufacturing might was a decisive factor in the war, and he also taught me that the key to America’s manufacturing prowess was fair competition in the marketplace. And that’s what drives productivity, and that’s what increased the standard of living throughout the world,” he said in a recent interview. That respect for America as a place that rewards hard work and integrity, coupled with his own boldness, led him to Silicon Valley. Krach turned cutting-edge tech startups into multi-billion-dollar public companies, such as DocuSign, the popular platform for signing agreements on electronic documents, and Ariba, a software offering businesses a more straightforward way to procure goods and services. The latter went public in 1999 as one of the first e-commerce companies geared toward businesses to do an initial public offering….