Messaging maestro David Gurle, Symphony founder
David Gurle, founder of the Symphony communications platform, spent more than a decade in the industry before he decided to become a technopreneur and bring his own visionary ideas of instant messaging to fruition.
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IN the 1970s, a touring Japanese cruise ship docked in the harbour of Istanbul with a display of the most cutting-edge technology Japan had to offer.
It was there that David Gurle, a nine-year-old French boy growing up in the Middle East, encountered a videophone for the first time. He marvelled as a grainy, black-and-white image of his mother in the next room appeared on the screen.
Mind you, it was a very different era back then. Mobile phones were not yet commercially available and fax machines were considered innovative. To reach his father, who was often away on diplomatic duties for France, Mr Gurle and his mother had to make weekly reservations for an international telephone call.
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