Profile: Ann Winblad of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners

 

Software venture capitalist Ann Winblad was dubbed  "the modern-day Artemis, Greek goddess of the hunt" by San Francisco Business Journal. Winblad and her four partners at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners  in San Francisco hunt for the most promising startups, investing more than $1 billion through six funds, each containing nearly $200 million.

Winblad is a math geek; friend and former girlfriend of Bill Gates; former head cheerleader; valedictorian of her high school class in Farmington, Minn.

“I really, really loved math,” Winblad said, and now she puts numbers to work.

Her firm invests just after a software startup is born. Some startups have seed funding but the  business has barely formed. Every startup picked by Winblad represents an exciting nucleus of potentiality that could erupt in profits... or not.

Winblad was a startup entrpreneur in the early days of tech. In 1976, with only $500 in startup capital, she co-founded Open Systems, an accounting software company. Six years later, she and her partners sold the business for $15 million. Yes, ladies...that's a whopping 30,000 times the initial capital. ( I think there's a big "You go girl!" in there for Ann.)

That experience whetted Winblad’s appetite for software company investments. Former Seattle SuperSonics basketball player John Hummer asked Winblad to become venture partners with him, she said yes (her dad coached basketball). Hummer was a Princeton graduate with a Stanford M.B.A., saw Winblad’s talent and thought they could make money together.

So how does her company work?

A software company chosen by Hummer Winblad receives a median of $2 million in Series A funding — the front end of startup, where risk looms large and the prospect of reward towers enticingly. Over the life of a company, Winblad’s firm might invest $10 million.

What does she look for in a company who is looking for investment?

Brainpower and talent are crucial. “Financial capital is worth nothing if it’s not coupled with great intellectual capital,” Winblad said.

Few women have achieved her prominence as venture capitalists. A recent National Venture Capital Association survey puts the participation of women among VC partners at 11 percent, down from 14 percent a few years ago. Women’s VC involvement in biotech companies is higher.

Winblad said, in her interview with the San Francisco Business Journal: "Most venture capitalists have technical backgrounds, master’s or doctoral degrees in fields where they invest."

In the United States, about 14 percent of college graduates are in math, science or engineering. “It’s almost the same as when I went to school,” said Winblad, who graduated in the mid-1970s. Only 25 percent of M.B.A. students are women, Winblad reports, slightly higher at 35 percent in Harvard and Stanford.

“Computer science classes are hard,” Winblad said. “Math, physics majors are hard. You could be a political science and French major and be a software investor, but it’s unlikely. It’s not smart.”

Tech marketing jobs require that employees understand SQL coding and business intelligence platforms, Winblad said. Better jobs require a grasp of big data — analysis of gargantuan data sets such as NSA surveillance video or cell phone and email records. Big data crunches already involve yottabytes — a quadrillion gigabytes.

What do  you need to succeed in the high-stakes Tech-related Venture Capital world?

Women who want careers working or investing in tech should join Girls Who Code, Winblad suggests. They should study math and science. “A degree in computer science is worth a lot more than other degrees,” Winblad said. “Programming is no longer geeky. There is not a job in this industry that does not involve programming.”

“I would love to see more women as venture capitalists, in these jobs,” Winblad said. More than 6,000 tech jobs go unfilled in the Bay Area, she noted.

Hummer Winblad invested in Karmasphere, a big-data analytics company based in Cupertino, and Winblad recruited Gail Ennis as its CEO. Ennis had worked as chief marketing officer at Omniture and in business development at BEA Systems (acquired by Oracle in 2008). “She had both the analytic spoke with Omniture and the architecture spoke with BEA,” Winblad said. Ennis earned a B.S. in molecular biology.

“Women are thinking they might be a CEO,” Winblad said. “But they might not be the first to apply.”

Winblad hires CEOs, leaders of fast-growth entities. If the right person is selected, her firm has brought value to the company and the investment blooms. “If we hire the wrong person, we are always bringing them back to the bench and coaching while the game is going on,” Winblad said.

“For women, the stakes are the same as for men. Hot jobs are in tech. If I could dangle a carrot in front of women to make these choices, be computer science majors or math majors. For women, this is a big carrot. These are hard majors, but they’re fun.”

“Being in the business of new is fun,” she said. “It’s thrilling when you know you have a real company and it starts growing. They figure out how to spin straw into gold. Success is seductive.”

 

DIVABase

Hummer Winblad Venture Partners

One Lombard Street
Suite 300
San Francisco, CA 94111
(415) 979-9600 Phone
(415) 979-9601 Fax