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Randy Komisar

American author and attorney

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 29, 2026
Entity authorityQ81878463
Source-derived summary

Randy Komisar is an American technology attorney, executive, and author living in Silicon Valley, California. Komisar is the co-founder of Claris, former CEO of Lucas Arts Entertainment, Chief Financial Officer of GO Corp, and the "virtual CEO" of TiVo.

Early career

Komisar attended Brown University for undergraduate studies and received a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He practiced law in the Boston area until he managed the legal aspects of the acquisition of Pixar by Steve Jobs. Following the acquisition, he went to work for Apple, where he worked on the project to license the Macintosh operating systems to Apollo Computer. Following the refusal of the board to license the operating system, Komisar accepted a job to co-found Claris.

Claris

Apple decided to spin software products off to a third party, creating Claris in 1987. Komisar was asked by Bill Campbell to become a co-founder of the company and ran a number of acquisitions. While at Claris, Komisar negotiated deals with Filemaker, which the company would morph into over time, but failed to negotiate an attempt to acquire Quark.

Claris would later announce intentions to go public.

Editorial summary

“Randy Komisar” enters the record as american author and attorney. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Randy, Komisar and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1987—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Randy, Komisar and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Randy Komisar” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Randy, Komisar and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q81878463. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1987.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Randy Komisar”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Randy Komisar primary sources, Randy Komisar archive and Randy research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Randy Komisar”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Randy Komisar” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.