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Carolyn Ong

Despite having one of the most spectacular career paths in Silicon Valley, Pauline Lo Alker still does not think she has 'made it'.

'Life is like being on a mission,' said Ms Lo Alker, chief executive of Amplify.net, a bandwidth infrastructure software start-up.

'I have not reached my destination yet. A lot of people tell me, 'Pauline, you are so successful, you have made it, why don't you retire?'.

'But I have not done everything I set out to accomplish yet.'

Ms Lo Alker arrived in the United States from Hong Kong when she was 17.

Once, the only way the bright, young daughter of a poor Hong Kong family could get hired by a computer company was to take a typing job, despite having all the necessary qualifications.

Today, that same woman is a celebrated Silicon Valley legend.

Ms Lo Alker's most noted accomplishment was her rescuing of Network Peripherals, a loss-making producer of gigabit ethernet data-transmission technology.

She increased sales, made the company profitable and took it public in Silicon Valley's most successful initial public offering (IPO) of 1994.

Network Peripherals shares, listed at US$6 a share, rose nearly fourfold to US$22.25 within four months of the IPO.

Ms Lo Alker retired in early 1998 from Network Peripherals, only to become restless after just a month. She joined Amplify.net, a promising Silicon Valley start-up, in June that year.

'I am a builder. That is why I like to be in young companies and help them take shape,' she said.

Ms Lo Alker was born Pauline Leung in Guangdong province in 1942. Her family fled to Hong Kong when she was six to escape the communists.

Like most daughters in traditional Chinese families, she understood at a very young age that her parents placed all their hopes in the eldest son. She was the second child and the only daughter of three children.

'Ever since I was very small, my parents taught me that my role in life was to help my eldest brother succeed,' she said.

Her parents' hopes for their first son got in the way of Ms Lo Alker's own dreams. Being a considerably better student, she graduated ahead of her older brother.

In deference to her parents' wishes, however, she waited until his graduation to apply with him to various US colleges.

One of her applications was to Northwestern University where she hoped to study music. She was deeply disappointed when she did not hear from the university. She found out later that her parents had intercepted a letter from Northwestern offering her a full music scholarship.

'My parents did not let me know about it because they did not want me to go unless my brother could go too,' she said without resentment.

She worked through university, holding a number of jobs to lessen her parents' financial burden and graduated from the University of Arizona with a double major in mathematics and music in 1964, a year ahead of her brother.

Doing her maths degree required her to take several classes in the engineering department. It was there that she met and fell in love with the computer.

'That was in 1963. I loved it immediately. Computers are a combination of logic, mathematics and art and it held my fascination instantly. It was not because I had the vision then that it would become central to our daily lives. I did not. I was just hooked,' she said.

But despite having all the right academic qualifications, she could not get a job in a computer company.

'Of course there was prejudice but I did not let that box me in. If you do not think you are being prejudiced against, then there is no prejudice,' she said.

Ms Lo Alker finally found work as a bookkeeper at Sears & Roebuck, a big US retailer. She took computer classes at night to improve her skills. It was there that she met a woman who was editor of the technical publication department at General Electric (GE) and learnt that there was a vacancy for a manuscript typist.

Ms Lo Alker was determined to get the job - not because she aspired to be a typist but because she had decided to get her foot in the door of a computer company that was at the forefront of technology.

'In those days, all documents were typed on those old, clunky IBM Selectrics but they were really state of the art at that time and I did not know how to use one,' she said. 'I rented a Selectric, practised hard and got the job. That was my first big break.'

A month later, there was a vacancy in the programming department. Ms Lo Alker applied.

'They put me on a programming aptitude test and I got it. I could not believe then that everything was turning out right for me.'

Even then, she found the big-company environment of GE too staid for a fast learner. In 1972, she was lured away to join start-up Amdahl Corp, moving two years later to a young company called Four Phase Systems. She joined as software engineering manager but was quickly promoted to head the software marketing department. By then, she was developing a razor-sharp instinct for computing trends and spotting new, hot technology.

In 1977 she jumped ship once again to head Intel's 16-bit development systems department. Personal computer fever was beginning to sweep Silicon Valley by then. In 1979 her boss left to co-found Convergent Technologies, a maker of workstations. She joined him about a year later as vice-president of marketing.

That job proved to be her ticket to the big-time. In her four years at Convergent she sold half a billion dollars worth of workstations to companies such as NCR, Burroughs and Gould-SEL. She was promoted to vice-president and general manager of the special products division.

In 1984, she decided to start Counterpoint Computers with Fred Kiremidjian, who had been a director of engineering at Convergent, to build a very high performance multi-processor system. Counterpoint was acquired by Taiwan-based PC maker Acer, its biggest customer, in 1987. Ms Lo Alker stayed on to manage the unit, first as president of Acer's network computing division, then as president of Acer America sales and marketing.

The job was gruelling and involved a lot of travel. By the end of 1990, she was ready to call it quits.

'I was really tired. I was just burnt out. Also, I had had enough of PCs. I knew that the heyday for PCs was over by the mid-1980s. It was just becoming a margin game. A faster chip, smaller form factor but basically the same technology. I wanted to get into networking,' she said.

She got that chance when Paul Ely, a former Hewlett-Packard operations manager turned venture capitalist, head-hunted her for the top job at Network Peripherals.

In addition to the challenge and excitement of building the business, Ms Lo Alker was offered a nice chunk of stock. In 1990, before she signed on as president and chief executive, Network Peripherals sales were only US$246,000. Its operations for the year lost US$808,000.

In three years, Ms Lo Alker turned the ship around. Its 1993 sales were US$10.68 million and by early 1994 it was clear that the time had come to go public. When she left Network Peripherals in 1998, the company was reporting sales of US$28.6 million for the year.

'I decided to get into Amplify.net because it is clearly where the industry is headed,' she said. 'With more and more traffic on the bandwidth, there is a growing need for companies in this niche which look at taking care of the quality and allocation of bandwidth.'

Ms Lo Alker was in Hong Kong recently to open Amplify.net's first office in Asia, as well as kick off Hongkong-SV.com, a non-profit consortium she chairs that aims to bring Silicon Valley expertise to Hong Kong and vice-versa.

'I started Hongkong-SV.com purely because I wanted to give. It is my contribution,' she said.

Francis Ho, Hong Kong's commissioner for Innovation and Technology, and Raymond Kwok Ping-luen, vice-chairman of Sun Hung Kai Properties, are board members of Hongkong-SV.com.

Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa's 'urgent call for a complete transformation of Hong Kong's property-based economy to one that is information technology driven, is a bold and courageous move,' she said. 'The economic downturn a few years back coincided with the [handover] to China. That was a wake-up call for Hong Kong people. I felt like I had to help because I am in a position to.

'A lot of people tell me, 'Why bother Pauline? You are not going to get anything out of it'. I have met so many people since I started Hongkong-SV.com. So many interesting and genuine people and it pleases me that Hongkong-SV.com could be of help to so many.'

Biography

Pauline Lo Alker, chief executive of Amplify.net, was born in Guangdong province in 1942. She was educated at the University of Arizona and worked at a variety of young computer companies, including Intel, before joining Convergent Technologies in 1979 as a vice-president. In 1984, she started Counterpoint Computers. Later, as chief executive of Network Peripherals, she turned the loss-maker around, taking it public in Silicon Valley's most successful IPO of 1994. She is chairman of Hongkong-SV.com.



Silicon Valley legend has a razor-sharp instinct for hot technology