The Next Small Thing

It Takes Two

There are lots of technovisionaries with great ideas. Some of them even convince investors to provide capital to turn those ideas into products. But products don't create breakthroughs - companies do. And great companies need more than vision. They need staying power. They need the kind of flexibility and tenacity that will keep them in the game even as the competition and the playing field keep changing.

Few people have more staying power than Donna Dubinsky, the first executive whom Jeff Hawkins hired - and the most important person behind the Pilot other than its inventor. Dubinsky, now 42, is Palm Computing's indispensable executive. She's its chief strategist, its top operator, the ultimate hands-on leader - and the perfect sidekick for Hawkins. It's impossible to understand the success of the Pilot without exploring the partnership between these two very different people.

"We have complementary skills, and that makes for a good relationship," says Hawkins. "We rarely disagree, and we can usually anticipate each other's actions. A year after Donna joined Palm, I wrote a review of her performance and surprised her with it over lunch. She had already done the same thing - she'd written a review of me! That's how in sync we are."

Donna Dubinsky grew up near a rusting industrial port in the southwest corner of Michigan. Her father was a scrap-metal dealer. In school, a division ran through her classes: kids who could read in one room, those who couldn't in another. Armed guards kept order on campus. When she left high school, she had no diploma, and she couldn't write a lick.

And she still got into Yale.

After graduation, Dubinsky took an entry-level job in banking and then enrolled in the Harvard Business School. She fell in love with a new product called the Apple II and vowed to work for the company that had created it. Twice she requested an on-campus interview, and twice she got rejected because she had no technical background. She flew out to Cupertino and managed to get an interview there - but never heard back from the company: "I called and said, 'Are you guys going to make me an offer?' ''

She got a job at Apple.

Dubinsky signed on as a lowly customer-support liaison - hardly the normal starting point for a Harvard MBA. But she bet that if Apple's strategic vision was as daring as its computers were, she would have lots of room to rise. She was right. In 1981, when she reported for duty, Apple had just broken the $200 million mark in annual revenues. Within four years, revenues hit $2 billion - and Dubinsky was running a big slice of Apple's distribution network. But in the spring of 1985, the company threatened to dismantle that network in favor of a cost-cutting just-in-time method. She had to spend more and more time defending her turf. "It was," she says, "the most miserable time in my career.''

At one point, she offered to resign. But after talking with Bill Campbell, a football-coach-turned-executive who had become a top Apple official, she decided to stay. Dubinsky went into international sales and worked out of Australia for about six months. In 1987, Campbell recruited her to be vice president for international sales on a team he was forming to lead Claris, a free-standing software company financed by Apple. Campbell was the company's first CEO.

"I loved it," Dubinsky says. "We had a great team. I was traveling 50% of the time. I was responsible for sales, marketing, and distribution outside the U.S. It was exhausting, but it was fun." In less than four years, she boosted her group's sales to 50% of Claris's total revenues. Then Apple bought back Claris's stock and took control of the company. "That was it," Dubinsky says. "I was outta there!'' By coincidence, Campbell left on the same day.

Dubinsky spent a year in Paris, licking her wounds and learning to paint. Then she contacted her mentor. Campbell was running GO, at the time the hottest startup in pen-based computing. "I want to grow a company," she told him. "I want to be a president. Do you think I have what it takes?'' Campbell said yes, and made some calls on her behalf. Among them was a call to venture capitalist Bruce Dunlevie, who was looking for someone to run Jeff Hawkins's startup. Dunlevie and Hawkins had already interviewed a dozen candidates, half of whom seemed more qualified than Dubinsky. But Dunlevie arranged for a meeting at Hawkins's house.

"It felt great from the start,'' Hawkins remembers. "She had no hidden agendas." Dubinsky found Hawkins to be equally straightforward. "He said he needed someone who would respect him as a product guy," she says. "And I had never seen anything like what he was talking about - electronics in the palm of your hand. It was the first time in a long time that I'd been really jazzed.''

She went home, wrote Hawkins a note ("I really want this job"), and gave him a list of 30 references. She also asked him for his references. Each person she talked with gave Hawkins the same reviews: He was brilliant. He had integrity. And he needed help.

Donna Dubinsky signed on with Palm Computing on June 15, 1992. Ever since, she says, "One of my great purposes in life has been to create an environment where Jeff Hawkins can thrive.''