In 1976, Ann Winblad started Open Systems, an accounting software company,
with the help of $500 she borrowed from her brother. The advent of the
microprocessor and the first affordable PCs created a new opportunity for
programmers. Winblad was one of the first generation of entrepreneurs who
figured out by trial and error what a software startup was. Six years later, she
and her cofounders sold the company for over $15 million.
In 1989, she cofounded Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, the first
venture firm to focus exclusively on software. In the years since, 45 of its
portfolio companies have been acquired or gone public. Now Winblad is
probably the most powerful woman in venture capital.
Livingston: Tell me a little about your background, how you were first introduced
to software, and why you first thought about starting your own company.
Winblad: I’ve always had to figure out ways to make a living and supplement
my income, even as a young girl. I grew up the oldest of six kids. My dad was a
high school basketball coach and a social studies teacher. My mom was a nurse.
She didn’t work while I was a young girl because I had four sisters and a brother
who were even younger than me. In order to have extra money, we had to find
ways to earn it. I was always trying to figure out ways to monetize anything in
order to have money to go to the movies or to buy clothes or things that don’t
come out of a very middle class–income family.
I was given an extraordinary opportunity when I started college. They
picked students with the top SAT scores and top grades as “experimental” students.
As a result, I did not have to take any prerequisites, so it allowed me to
take a lot more focused courseware than most students. I could do whatever I
wanted. If you wanted to get in a class even though it was not your declared
major, they would have to take you. In a liberal arts school at that time it was
very hard to double major because, by the time you took all the prerequisites to
lay the foundation for your liberal arts education, you only had time for one
major. So I was able to double major in mathematics and business administration
and also fill in a whole bunch of other classes, like computer science and
acting, that most students wouldn’t have.
In the ’70s in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, there were a number of young,
but growing, colleges: College of St. Thomas, Macalester College, the College
of St. Catherine, Augsburg College, and Hamline College. They had what was
called a five-college cooperative. They were all within a couple miles of each