Omid Kordestani

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Born: 1963
Education: B.S. in Electrical Engineering from San Jose State. MBA from Stanford University

Occupation: Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales and Field Operations, Google Inc.
Claim to Fame: Google


Biography
Early Career:

Omid Kordestani started his career in marketing, product management, and business development at The 3DO Company, Go Corporation, and Hewlett-Packard. Kordestani joined Netscape as director of OEM Sales. During his four-year stay at Netsape, he was able to establish major accounts with clients such as Citibank, AOL, Amazon, Intuit, Travelocity, Intel, @Home, eBay, and Excite. While at Netscape, Kordestani grew the company's website revenues from $88 million per annum to more than $200 million per annum within 18 months.

Innovative Googling:

In 1999, Kordestani joined Google. From years of Internet experience, Kordestani knew to avoid annoying pop-up ads and intrusive flash banners. He implemented the idea of selling paid listings. He found this to be a simple, yet effective, method which had been perfected by rival Overture. Paid listings work as follows: sponsors pay for rights to specific keywords: when a user enters a keyword, a related sponsor appears alongside the search results. Kordestani believes that the right relationships create the most effective business solutions. He once refused a multimillion-dollar deal because the fit had not been right. He looks for quality int he form of repeatable and sustainable revenue from a long-term customer.

At Google, he is given one of the most challenging and difficult jobs: revenue generation. Today, as Vice President of Business Development and Sales at the company, Kordestani leads a global team of 90 sales people. With a 1.9% stake in the company and a pending IPO in 2004, Kordestani will have more than strong ad revenues to be smiling about. Analysts estimate the company to be worth somewhere between $20 and $30 billion.

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Affairs of the heart are never easy for outsiders to understand. But when they stray into the office, they, alas, become everyone's business. Which is why we asked, a while back, which Googler had put his marriage at risk over an affair with a coworker. As commenter notelling correctly guessed after we ran a blind item, it's Omid Kordestani, Google's top sales executive. Kordestani's no mere sales guy, however. For one, he's worth $2.2 billion, thanks to his Google shares. And inside the Googleplex, he's referred to as the company's "business founder," responsible for the fabulously successful money machine that is AdWords. With his stunningly beautiful and intelligent wife, Bita, shown above to the left, Kordestani might seem to have it all. But all was not enough.



Kordestani's new love, as is widely known within Google, is Gisel Hiscock, a New York-based finance director for the company.

Before you commenters say it, allow me: Yes, her last name is singularly unfortunate. But since Hiscock joined Google in 2003, before its lucrative IPO, it's unlikely that she's after Kordestani for his money. One imagines she might be more interested in obtaining a new surname.
But back to business. One tipster describes Hiscock's role as "sales finance," a group that now reports to Google's CFO, not Kordestani. Hiscock, however, has been at Google since 2003, and at one point sales finance reported to Kordestani. It's not clear when the affair began, but it's possible that Hiscock was Kordestani's employee at the time. And Kordestani, given his importance to the company, holds unspoken authority within Google that reaches beyond his direct line of command.