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Ann Winblad, co-founder of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, has helped launch more than 70 startups with a total capital investment of $350 million. She sits on the boards of seven companies and speaks twice a month at conferences and universities about entrepreneurship and the future of the Internet economy. On Mar. 3, Winblad will address about 300 MBA women at the National Conference for Graduate Women in Business at the University of California at Los Angeles. She recently spoke to Business Week Online reporter Mica Schneider. Here's an edited transcript of their conversation:
Q: How are women's roles in the workplace changing now that so many
varied job opportunities exist? Are women breaking through the
cyber-ceiling?
A: Companies that have been around for 50 years are another world to
me. I entered the technology arena the same year that Microsoft was
started. And the arena has always felt like a meritocracy, though there
were never many women.
Women have taken on work as an important dimension of their lives. It
does not mean that they don't face a lot of challenges. But I can see it
in star portfolio companies. Hummer Winblad has lots of women CEOs:
Julie Wainright at Pets.com. Courtney Rosen is the CEO of eHow.com [a
"how-to" Web site]. Madeline Schroeder is the CEO of Mambo.com. Helen K.
Whelan is the president of MyPrimeTime.com. Mary Alice Taylor is the CEO
of HomeGrocer.com, a company that is registering for its IPO.
It's an extraordinary challenge [for women] to get all of the pillars of
their lives together. But the number of women is multiplying, as are the
number of role models, and the number of people who are figuring out how
to balance the demands of leading a company in a fast-growth industry.
More people are willing to be entrepreneurs. Even business schools say
it's challenging to keep top students there for two years. That change
happened just in the last 48 months, where the entrepreneur has become
the focus of the world economy.
Q: In March, you will address about 300 female MBA candidates at UCLA
about the new opportunities they have to advance in business. How will
they succeed?
A: When you look at the Internet, and the type of investments
capitalists are making -- into pet, music, food, deep-space technology
companies -- it requires us to understand the competitive dynamics of
massive industries in a few days, without kidding ourselves that we know
everything.
You will never be fully equipped for your job, especially in an emerging
growth industry. Your commitment cannot be the assumption of knowledge,
but the assumption that you'll always need to learn more.
Not everyone is capable of being a CEO. It means you don't get to pal
around with all your employees and that you leave the
sorority/fraternity approach to life behind, and you take on a role that
is, in some respects, lonely.
Q: What improvements should these women concentrate on making at work?
A: Having a sense of humor is great, and being yourself. People in the technology industry are a bunch of unique characters. There is only one Lawrence J. Ellison [Oracle's CEO]. There's only one Esther
Dyson [chairman of Icann, the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names &
Numbers, and of Edventure Holdings]. There is only one John T. Chambers
[CEO of Cisco Systems]. In other industries, people seem a little
indistinguishable. They are caricatures of what you saw in the movies of
businessmen. And women have gotten confused over whether they should
adopt that character.
The people who are most successful are comfortable in their own skin.
Women, like everyone else, have to take careful inventory of what their
skill set is. They have to at look themselves in the mirror every day
and ask, "What is it I don't know? Can I run a company?" Those are the
things that are really key, vs. saying, "Let's get all pumped up and
go out there and conquer the world."
Q: How could a shakeout of startups affect entrepreneurs? Could you
foresee a mass exodus back to Corporate America?
A: Once an entrepreneur, it's very hard to go back. It's a life-corrupting experience. We'd have to set up some rehabilitation
center with a 12-step program for that to happen. We're asking our
[startup] companies to have knowledge of strategy, performance, metrics,
and to be pervasive to every employee in the company, vs. [having]
pockets of knowledge that exist in much larger established corporations.
On the other hand, [the experience of] having worked in an established company has a lot of benefits. You see a fully functioning company operate, vs. one being built from scratch. Many times you learn from effective leaders and see a different competitive dynamic. The big challenge for major corporations is to create an entrepreneurial environment.
Q: It's often noted that women don't get paid as well as men do in
Corporate America. Has any such pay disparity surfaced among startups?
A: The good news is, "traditional" is almost gone. The technology
industry is the centerpiece of the global economy. Why don't those women
quit those industries and come to work in an industry that appreciates
them?
We have more job openings in the technology and Internet area than we
can fill, so if they are where all of the ceilings are glass and are not
getting paid enough, why stay?
[At startups,] the competition for senior executives and even middle
managers is huge. These are small companies, and you would have more
than a palace revolt if you tried to use different pay scales. Intellectual-capital resources are so highly appreciated, and [in some
cases they] are the only asset [these companies have].
EDITED BY PAUL JUDGE
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