1. Discuss the concepts from the assigned class materials that helped Heidi Roizen develop her influence and networking success. Be sure to use examples from her case to bolster your discussion.

HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL 9-800-228 REV: APRIL 28, 2010 KATHLEEN MCGINN NICOLE TEMPEST Heidi Roizen Heidi Roizen-a venture capitalist at Softbank Venture Capital (Softbank) and a former entrepreneur-sat back at her oversized desk in her home office in Atherton, California, and logged onto her computer. It was a typical morning for her; she had received 40 e-mails overnight. Another 100 or so would come in over the course of the day. Among her e-mails, Roizen received an average of 10 business plans per day-almost all referrals from people she knew in the high-tech industry. Roizen had spent the first decade of her career actively building her network in order to help the software company she co-founded, T/Maker, compete against better-capitalized software developers. Through her roles as CEO of T/Maker, president of the Software Publishers Association, and later, vice president of worldwide developer relations at Apple Computer, Roizen had developed a network that included many of the most powerful business leaders in the technology sector. Over the years, Roizen had also mastered the skill of blending professional networking with social networking; she was well-known throughout Silicon Valley for hosting dinner parties at her house that included the likes of Bill Gates of Microsoft and Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems. An outgoing, high-energy person by nature, Roizen had a genuine passion for meeting smart, interesting people and helping them connect with other people she knew. In some cases, Roizen even took it a step further and actively helped people in her network find new career opportunities, but she was careful to leverage her contacts only when she could see a true win-win for both parties. After a stint as a "mentor capitalist," Roizen was invited in 1999 to join Softbank as one of five investing partners for its newly raised $636 million fund focused on Internet companies. While Roizen started working for Softbank 30% of her time, she had moved to 50% by the end of her second month, and 80% by the end of her fourth month-the point at which she declared a "hard-stop." At 80%, Roizen realized she was no longer "dabbling"; rather she had fully committed herself to the life and role of a high-profile venture capitalist. She wondered what impact her role as a venture capitalist would have on her ability to build and maintain her network in the future. Going forward, would she need to tailor her approach to either venture capital or networking to allow herself to do both successfully?Background Raised in Silicon 1valley, Roizen was surrounded by technology and entrepreneurship at a very young age. Roizen's fatheran engineer by trainingspent the first part of his career at Ampex, where he helped develop the first color videotape. Il-"'I.I'hile Roizen's early childhood was chamcterized by financial security, that changed after her parents divorced when she was nine years old. Her father went on to start his own company, which ultimately failed. As a result, Roizen's high school years were marked by nancial conservatism. Her mother worked in the high school cafeteria to help pay due bills and Roizen started a puppet show business for diildren's bird'lday parties to earn additional money. Following high school, Roizen attended Stanford University where she majored in creative writing. During Hoizen's junior year there, her fiance' was killed in a plane crash. Roizen was devastated by his death, and was forced to reassess her perspective on relationships and career. Roizen realized that she had slipped into more of a supporting role for her fiance, rather than pursuing her own interests and goals. lElver time, her life had increasingly revolved around his. Roizen made a lifrrchanging decision to never again be so dependent on the fate of another person. She committed herself to finishing her studies at Stanford as quickly as possible so that she could pursue a career of her own. After graduating two quarters early in December 19W, Roizen found that the local job market was limited largely to high tech jobsa challenging environment for a creative writing major. As a result, she eagerly sought an open position with Tandem Computer {Tandem} as editor of the company newsletterone of the few jobs in the market that allowed her to use her w1iti.ng skills while simultaneously learning about technology. Building a Network Tandem While there were over on applicants for the position at Tandem, Roizen had a friend at the company who gave her the phone number of the woman in charge of the hiring process. Roizen called the woman on a Saturday to express her interest in the position, expecting to get her voicemail. lnstead, the manager happened to be in the office and answered the phone. The two hit it off and, soon thereafter, Roizen was offered the job. Roizen's first experience with networking had proved a successful one. As editor of the company newsletter, Roizen wrote about the company's performance, new product releases, upcoming company events, and personal interest stories, including births and marriages. In order to stay abreast of company events, Roizen was invited to sit in on due monthly top management meetings in which important strategic topics were discussed. Roizen felt privileged to be included in these meetings and made 'IE most of die opportunity: It's difficult to develop a professional relationship with anyone, let alone a seniorlevel executive, when you have no reason for interacting. So, it would be tough to start working at a company and say, \"Gee, I think I'll get to know 'le CED.\" That's probably not going to happen unless 'le CED has some reason to interact with you. As the editor of die internal newspaper, there was a good reason why the CED was going to talk to mel was one of his main communication vehicles to his employees. Now you could either take that opporhinil'y and not run with it, or you could take it and say, "This is a rare opporttmity for me to demonstrate my perfonnance and my consistency, to deliver on promises, to put my best foot forward, to make sure I've done my homework before each meeting, and to build my reputation.\" I diose the latter approach. Heidi Roizen 800-228 T/Maker When Roizen made the decision to return to school for a graduate degree in business, she leveraged the relationship she had built with Tandem's CEO and asked him to write a recommendation for her. After graduating from Stanford's Graduate School of Business in 1983, Roizen decided not to go into investment banking and consulting as many of her classmates were. An early adopter of the personal computer, she decided to work with her brother-a computer programmer-to turn a software program he had written, called T/Maker (short for "tablemaker"), into a real company. Introduced in 1979, the T/Maker product was one of the first entrants into the market for spreadsheet software, which developed rapidly after Lotus introduced its Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet program in 1982. Compared to Lotus 1-2-3 and VisiCale-another early market entrant-T/Maker utilized a more visually-oriented approach to building equations. T/Maker was generally considered easier to use than competitive products for simple equations, but more difficult to use for complex equations. Roizen felt strongly that T/Maker should operate completely on its own cash flow, with no bank debt or outside equity, in order to give the company flexibility to make the "right" decisions for the business. However, as a result, T/Maker had less capital to draw upon, which made it difficult for the company to break into the retail channel and compete against well-capitalized players like Lotus. Lotus was using its venture capital backing to invest heavily in sales and marketing, which appealed to retailers who wanted to carry only those products that could generate high consumer demand. Similarly, distributors wanted to stock only those products that retailers wanted. Realizing that T/Maker needed to find a creative, cost-effective means of generating consumer demand, Roizen began an aggressive campaign to build awareness of the company and its product. Leveraging her outgoing personality and her desire to meet interesting people, Roizen began to build relationships with members of the press-encouraging them to review the T/Maker product in their publications. She also attended numerous industry conferences and events, always being sure to maximize even the shortest, most informal conversations at these events. As Royal Farros, a friend from Stanford and a co-founder of T/Maker explained, "Heidi is a pro at turning a brief conversation into one of substance, by contributing one or two unique ideas in a short period of time. That helps make the conversation memorable." Roizen also joined a handful of well-known technology-oriented groups-such as the Software Entrepreneurs Forum-and took advantage of just about any opportunity to sit on a panel or give an interview, making a point of giving her undivided attention to any audience. As Farros-who went on to be CEO of iPrint.com-learned from Roizen, "You never want to seem distracted. After all, you never know if the reporter you're talking to will turn up at Forbes next." In addition, Roizen decided to join the board of the Software Publishers Association (SPA), the trade group dedicated to raising awareness about specific issues relevant to the software industry. Later, Roizen was elected president of the SPA, which gave her significant industry exposure and the opportunity to meet with industry leaders to discuss issues on their agendas. Brian Gentile, vice president of marketing and business development at eALITY Inc. and a former work associate of Roizen's, reflected on Roizen's role with the SPA: "Heidi chose to get involved with the SPA at an important time in the industry's evolution-when there were major causes to stand for. She was passionate about specific issues and themes and she helped rally the industry around them." Interestingly, many of the industry participants whom Roizen met and befriended during the mid- 1980s were not well-known at the time, but went on to become leaders in the technology industry years later-a fact that Roizen willingly acknowledges: "It's easier to get to know people when they're not famous; then when they do become famous, you already have a relationship with them."800-228 Heidi Roizen interesting and smart-as opposed to powerful-paid off repeatedly throughout the years. As Ellen Levy, a Netbatsu' development officer at Softbank, explained: Heidi simply likes to get to know and be friends with good-quality, talented people-that's her primary motivation. In some ways, by investing so much time in these people, she is placing a bet-but those bets have paid off for her in the past. When Apple Computer (Apple) introduced its Macintosh (Mac) computer in January 1984, T/Maker quickly embraced the new platform and designed several of the first software programs for it. As a result, T/Maker gained a large and loyal following of customers for a number of its products, including the successful ClickArt series of Mac products. In 1985, T/Maker decided to broaden its product line and develop a user-friendly graphics package for the PC platform-an untapped market. Within months, the software industry was buzzing about T/Maker's impending product, named ClickArt Personal Publisher (Personal Publisher). Industry observers were hailing "sneak previews" of Personal Publisher as a "desktop publishing solution" for the PC. The market's widespread anticipation of the official product launch put significant pressure on the company to quickly finish the product. To speed up the process, the company diverted already short resources from the T/Maker product to Personal Publisher, causing Roizen's brother to become increasingly uncomfortable with the direction the company was taking. As a result, in 1986, Roizen and Farros agreed to buy out her brother's ownership stake for $500,000. In April 1986, Personal Publisher finally shipped-six months after the originally announced publication date. The company breathed a sigh of relief, but it was short-lived. Within days, market demand for the product was so strong that it swamped the company's operations. Realizing the company did not have the capital or staff to fully take advantage of the product's unique window of opportunity, Roizen and Farros decided to sell the Personal Publisher product to Software Publishing Corporation in late 1986. Following this experience, Roizen and Farros decided to seek venture capital backing, ultimately receiving venture funding from two well-known venture capital firms- Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and Draper Associates. After growing T/Maker to $15 million in sales and 100 employees, Roizen and Farros decided to sell the company in 1994 to Deluxe Corporation-a provider of products and services for the financial payment systems industry. However, Roizen stayed on as CEO of the T/Maker subsidiary until 1996. Maintaining and Leveraging a Network Apple In early 1996, Roizen made the decision to leave Deluxe to join Apple as vice president of worldwide developer relations, with 300 people reporting to her. A longtime personal and professional supporter of the Apple platform herself, Roizen was passionate about helping the company. By 1996, Apple had lost significant market share and was on a seemingly endless downward spiral. Roizen's primary job was to shore up Apple's relationships with its 12,000 external software developers to ensure that they continued to support the Apple platform and to give them a sense of confidence in Apple's long-term viability. While software for the Apple platform once