Ex-tech executive invests in women
By Jim Hopkins
USA Today
SAN FRANCISCO — Catherine Muther has often been one step ahead of the crowd.
USA Today
The granddaughter of a Boston suffragette, Muther landed at Cisco Systems as head of marketing in 1989, when the company was still young and women were rarely seen in the executive suite. Nearly five years and one Cisco initial public offering later, Muther left with millions of dollars' worth of stock. She plunged into the relatively new field of venture philanthropy — taking an active role in the causes she supports.
Catherine Muther is using her millions to help women start up technology companies.
But unlike other New Economy philanthropists, Muther poured $2 million of her Cisco stock into a charitable foundation that created a nonprofit business incubator for a neglected niche: technology startups launched by women. The Women's Technology Cluster, housed in a state-of-the-art building in San Francisco, is home to 16 software, wireless and other information technology ventures.
Participating startups must have a woman among the principals, and in return for support, startups pledge 2 percent of their stock to the cluster's Venture Philanthropy Fund to support others.
Twelve companies sheltered in the incubator have left. Three of those 12 have been sold. An additional five remain in business and have more than 100 employees.
The number of female-owned companies has been growing twice as fast as that of men. Yet they tend to be concentrated in low-growth sectors, such as retailing, making it less likely that they'll become future economic engines. Muther, 54, aims to change that by helping women gain access to venture capitalists, lawyers and other key players in entrepreneurship.
Muther got a bachelor's in anthropology at Sarah Lawrence College, where she is a member of the board of directors, and a master's in social anthropology at Cambridge University in England. But a job at Wellesley College, managing the Center for Research on Women, pushed Muther toward entrepreneurship. "I really liked running things," she says.
In 1976, she enrolled at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. Women made up about 20 percent of her graduating class compared with 3 percent to 4 percent a few years before, but well under current rates of about 40 percent.
She joined consulting firm Arthur D. Little, where she landed a federal government contract to help minority-owned companies grow. In her first broad contact with entrepreneurs, she learned that startups weren't for slackers.
"It's not a fun job," she said. "The people who are engaged in creating and building businesses have a real passion and commitment ... ."
By 1983, when she left Arthur D. Little, Muther wanted to be work-
ing in business management. It was clear that technology was the future of business. That led to a job as head of marketing at Bridge Communications, a computer networking company.
Three years later, Bridge merged with 3Com, where Muther became vice president of corporate marketing. By 1989, she'd gone from being a tech outsider to overseeing marketing at a company with $250 million in annual revenue.
Around this time, a group of Stanford computer scientists had started Cisco. In 1989, when co-founder Len Bosach recruited Muther to lead marketing, Cisco had just $25 million in annual revenue and was still privately owned. During the nearly five years she was there, Cisco's annual revenue grew to more than $1 billion.
In that male-dominated company, Muther pushed for change. She gave other executives electronic "zappers" with flashing red lights. They were used to make a buzzing sound whenever someone made a sexist remark during management meetings, says Cisco Chairman John Morgridge. "She certainly was a major factor in bringing the gender issue to Cisco."
The company went public a year after Muther joined. Its stock, adjusted for splits, skyrocketed from pennies a share to more than $80 at its peak in 2000.
"As I realized I was becoming a wealthy person," Muther says, "I asked myself questions: What does this mean? And what am I going to do about this?"
Muther left Cisco in 1994. She started her foundation, the Three Guineas Fund, a year later. The fund has $5 million in assets and one of its major ventures is the Women's Technology Cluster.
Muther's Cisco background is a huge asset to her philanthropic interests. "It increases her credibility and her network," says Andrea Silbert, CEO of the Boston-based Center for Women & Enterprise.
"She was a pioneer in the sense that she knew the technology sector. She knew women were entering it. And she knew that the change she could make was at the entry point."
