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April 17, 2006 Vol. 77, no.
13S
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| STEPHANIE
DIMARCO, co-founder and CEO of Advent
Software, Inc., will speak on April 19 as part of the College’s “View
from the Top” Lecture
Series. (Photo provided by Advent)
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How to
build a successful software company
On April 19, Advent CEO and cofounder will share lessons learned
It was 1982, and Stephanie DiMarco (B.S.’79 Business Administration),
three years out of Berkeley, was in a pickle. She was working as a
financial analyst at her third corporate firm. “I didn’t
like my job, and I thought to myself, ‘Boy, I don’t like
any of these jobs.’ I wanted to work in a place that was based
on a meritocracy, where it didn’t matter who you were as long
as you were successful in your job.”
Then, a door opened. “In the early 1980s, we didn’t have
any computer programs. We had a lot of paperwork and were using typewriters.
I called my friend Steve Strand (B.S.’79 EECS), a Cal engineer,
and asked him, ‘Why don’t you come here and help me automate
this?’”
DiMarco and Strand wrote a portfolio accounting system for a five-megabyte
PDP 11/23. Around that same time, IBM introduced its first single-user
machine, and the light bulb went off: Why not write a program for
the small computer market? When the firm declined to invest in their
system,
DiMarco and Strand left. In 1983, they founded Advent Software. “We were flat broke,” DiMarco
recalls of those early days. The 24-year-old convinced an angel investor
to bet $90,000 on the nascent company. It was a godsend, but, as a
business grad, she figured it would last them one year.
“90K wasn’t a lot to start a company, and we were frantic
to get the product to market, sell it to money managers, and start
generating
some cash,” she says. “We worked very, very hard out of
desperation. We were motivated to make it by the end of the year.”
Luck and timing conspired with them. The personal computer took
off, and the 1980s served up a bull market.
DiMarco became CEO, and today, San Francisco-based Advent has 850
employees, more than 4,000 clients in 50 countries, and more than
$150 million
in yearly revenues.
“We built the company by listening to what our customers needed
and then keeping a careful eye on the technology most appropriate
to solve
their problems,” DiMarco says. “But we never fall in love
with a technology here — only to the extent it’s the right
one to best meet our customers’ needs.”
DiMarco also built her ideal workplace, giving employees creative
freedom in their work and instituting family- and pet-friendly policies.
With
Advent’s low employee turnover and high customer satisfaction,
she’s created a corporate success.
“In the end, you follow your heart in the way you think is
best,” she
says.
Want more tips and insights on building a successful career in
the software industry? Come hear DiMarco deliver a talk entitled “Lessons
on Long-Term Success in the Software Business” on Wednesday,
April 19, at 4 p.m. in Sibley Auditorium, part of the College’s “View
from the Top” Lecture Series. The event will be followed by a
reception in Garbarini Lounge.
For more information about Advent, go to http://www.advent.com/Default.aspx.
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