October 9, 2000

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Women In Technology
Anne Perlman Moai Technologies

By Clinton Wilder

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ow driven is Moai Technologies Inc. CEO Anne Perlman? The answer may lie in her subconscious. Until about six months ago, Perlman sheepishly admits, almost all of her dreams were about Moai, the company she has headed for almost three years. Moai president and chief operating officer Matt Miller calls her "one of the more driven people I've ever met." And that's from a guy who's worked in marketing at Oracle. "She's so engaged in the company 24-by-7, it's almost impossible to tell when she's not in town," says Miller, "even when she goes to Europe."

Yet that intensity isn't readily apparent from Perlman's personality. This is a CEO who spends three hours with a reporter, much of it over a lunch discussion of a nearly-foreign topic to her (baseball), and then thanks the reporter for his time. She's a CEO who confesses she's often too busy to remember the birthdays of friends and relatives, but makes sure to get all the details about an employee's birthday when she spots balloons tied to a cubicle wall in the office.

Perlman is a rare combination: a highly motivated, Silicon Valley-seasoned CEO with very little visible ego. "To me, business is like soccer," the 46-year-old Perlman says. "You don't win with one superstar, you win with the best team. We have 160 employees with families and career goals. That's my biggest motivation to win."

And that's a quality that Miller admires. "Too many Internet CEOs are way too full of their own pompous vision to say what their products mean for the customer," he says. "Anne presents Moai in terms of dollars and cents--we sell things that help people buy things more cheaply.

She's very direct, business oriented, and no-nonsense."

With both of her parents working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, Perlman learned at an early age about motivation and high goals. But she's always believed that success in business is about achievements, not her own career advancement. In her 15-year career at Tandem Computers, a telling moment came in 1992 when she asked to give up her job as VP of marketing to run the company's fledgling multimedia business. The move would take her from a 125-employee department and a $25 million budget to a unit with eight people doing little more than $1 million in sales. "She's crazy," Perlman recalls Tandem CEO James Treybig telling her boss, "but let her do it."

Why the apparent step down the corporate ladder? Because Perlman wanted to build and grow a business. "Marketing wasn't a job I liked," she says. "It's a cost center, it's very political, and it's really measured as an art rather than a science--by opinions. I like to run things that I can feel passionate and evangelical about."

Perlman led Tandem's multimedia unit to more than $12 million in revenue in two years, and now she's got similar fast-track growth goals at Moai--and even more passion and evangelism. Riding the burgeoning wave of business-to-business E-commerce with Moai's online industrial-auctions software and services, Perlman has led Moai's growth to 130 customers and a forthcoming initial public offering. She's one of only a handful of female CEOs in business-to-business E-commerce, but she's not very big on the "successful-woman-in-a-male-dominated industry" theme.

"Glass ceiling? There isn't one," she responds quickly. "I've never hit my head on it that I've known. Maybe I've had the good fortune of always being in merit-based situations, but I've always assumed gender neutrality. I wouldn't want to be chosen for any position because I'm female or not chosen for the same reason. I rarely think in terms of 'I'm a woman in high tech.' I think about running a business."

About the only obvious gender bias Perlman says she's seen in her career was the shortage of women's restrooms in business school at the University of California at Los Angeles, where only 22% of her 1976 MBA class was female. As a straight-A student and high-school valedictorian in Livermore, Calif., she grew up with a passion for science and math. She attended a National Science Foundation summer program for outstanding high-school math students, took calculus at night at the local junior college, and tutored other students ranging from the gifted to the mentally disabled.

She earned a math degree at the University of California at Santa Cruz in three years, then took only one year to complete another in economics. After business school, she spent four years at public-school software provider Computer Curriculum Corp. before joining Tandem in 1981.

The top post at Moai, which she took in late 1997, came as something of a surprise. She was working as an independent consultant, helping startup companies with their business plans, and some venture-capital associates asked her to meet with Moai founder Deva Hazarika. "I thought the VCs wanted advice on whether they should fund the company," Perlman recalls. "Then they left the room, and I talked with Deva for an hour and a half. It was kind of like a blind date, and I fell in love with the company."

FactFile

Title: CEO, Moai Technologies Years at Moai: Three Previous positions at Moai: None; joined as CEO Previous positions at other companies: Independent consultant: 15 years at Tandem Computers as general manager of multimedia, VP of marketing, and general manager of OEM printer/PC/terminals business; director, Computer Curriculum Education: MBA from UCLA, bachelor's degrees in mathematics and economics from University of California, Santa Cruz Personal status: Engaged; no children Hobbies: Fly-fishing; board member, Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose Future goals: Building a "great business and good future" at Moai No. of high-level female execs at Moai: One

Perlman's passion for Moai comes from the company's filling a tangible business need: the ability to set nonprice parameters, such as product availability and delivery dates, in online business-to-business auctions. "I love what we enable," she says. "It's the way business is really done."

And as much as Perlman is devoted to Moai's employees, it's the customers who come first. Perlman spends a great deal of time with customers such as Eastman Chemical Co., and has mandated that other executives do the same, assigning an executive sponsor for every customer and partner. "Her strongest skill is the ability to interact with customers and partners, telling them what we can do and understanding what they need done," Miller says. "I've known plenty of executives who love to sell, to close a deal. A much lower number love to build and maintain the relationship as Anne does. She just really loves talking to people."

The 24-by-7 CEO isn't all work--just nearly all. She recently took up fly-fishing, a sport that rewards Perl-man with more than just the obvious diversions like a brief vacation in Idaho. "It involves physics, entomology, wind calculation--full concentration on something besides business," she says. "For me, that's a brain vacation. As a CEO, it's very important to turn off your mind sometimes."

In a more significant out-of-office pursuit, Perlman devotes considerable time as a board member of the Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose.

Throughout most of her career, Perlman acknowl-edges, she has often been the only woman in the room during a meeting or sales call. She's not only used to it, she believes it's an advantage. She thinks of the blue-haired guy who always turns heads on the commuter train from her Silicon Valley home to Moai's San Francisco headquarters.

"When you're the only one of something, everyone notices," she says. "Differentiation is always an advantage. I know that whenever I speak, people are going to be curious, at least at first, about what I'm going to say. To me, that's a big plus."

What's next for Perlman? Even she's not sure. "My goals always change; they go higher and higher. But right now I'd say they're to build a great business and a good future for Moai's employees, to be a good philanthropist, and to be able to look back years from now and say I had a great time doing it."

Continue on to profile of Chris Cournoyer, Lotus
Return to profile of Denise Lahey, OracleMobile

Photo by Alan Blaustein

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