William Appleton (entrepreneur)

After stints in Silicon Valley and Chicago, Appleton moved back home to Knoxville, Tennessee. From 1994 to 1998, Appleton served as founder and president of Cyberflix Inc., a Knoxville-based multimedia computer programming company specializing in interactive movie production.[9][10] While at Cyberflix, Appleton worked on the hit titles Lunicus and Jump Raven, both of which were sold to Paramount Technology Group.[11] In a 1993 interview with the Chicago Tribune, Appleton discussed what he saw as the future of video game characters. "Great dramatic issues will be played out on CD-ROM, things that will play all of the human emotions, love hate, joy, greed, childbirth, death, promotion, firing – you name it," he was quoted as saying.

Cyberflix launched its hit title Titanic: Adventure Out of Time in November 1996.[12] Production costs totaled $2 million, and the game retailed for $50.[13] The Titanic title went on to sell millions of copies and become an international best-selling CD-ROM game.[12] The game features an interactive, authentic replica of the Titanic ship that took two years of research to create digitally and included the use of the ship's original blueprints.[12][14] At the time, the Discovery Channel called it "the most historically accurate digital model of Titanic available."[15] Titanic: Adventure Out of Time earned a MacHome Journal Home Choice Award in 1997, as well as a first place prize for best animation at the World Animation Celebration.[16] By 1998, Cyberflix had 35 employees, and annual revenue exceeded $3 million.[17] Throughout his career, Appleton has worked with Disney, Paramount and Viacom to create applications for content development.

Appleton served as the chief technology officer of DreamFactory, a Campbell, California-based company he co-founded. DreamFactory builds software tools for the enterprise, originally targeting Salesforce.com users and currently developing a cloud service platform for enterprise companies to move their apps and data freely without any lock-in restrictions to any hosted cloud.[18] Appleton is also credited with developing third-party enterprise applications for Cisco WebEx Connect, Microsoft Windows Azure and Intuit WorkPlace.