Co-founding partner, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners (last year
No. 20) AGE 47 E-MAILawinblad@humwin.com BIO In 1976 Winblad
started Open Systems Inc. with $500. Six years later, she sold it
for $15 million. Not a bad return on investment, and it is just
this sort of start-small-and-finish-big (and rich) philosophy
that has made Hummer Winblad the success that it is today. The
venture-capital fund she started with John Hummer now has over
$200 million in investments and concentrates solely on software
concerns. They make an odd couple. He played basketball for the
Seattle Supersonics, and she is all of 5 ft. 3 in. tall. Some of
their success stories include Wind River Systems, Farallon
Communications and screen-saver giant Berkeley Systems. 1998 POWER PLAY Another Hum Win baby was NetDynamics, a producer of
application software for servers. Sun acquired NetDynamics in a
July stock swap. The sum was undisclosed, but you can be sure
that Winblad made a pretty penny on the deal. PLACE YOUR BETS Any
company that was good enough for Hummer Winblad funding is a good
bet come ipo time. Winblad is famous for thoroughly testing her
investments before forking over a check by pitching them to
potential customers. Keep an eye on Biztravel.com, Liquid Audio
and wedding services and information site, The Knot. Winblad
knows a little something about relationships: she once dated Bill
Gates.
