An article about me appeared in the San Francisco Biz Inc. last week. I finally received permission from them to post it here.
My favorite part: Where the writer says I have the humility of someone who is not humble.
Hey, I resemble that. No humble person would ever publish a blog. Would they?
Published: Friday, June 04, 2004
BY RHONDA ASCIERTO
Rarely is opportunity fortuitous. Though Gina Smith says hers is a story of luck, her trip from journalist to CEO to novelist has everything to do with hard work and tenacity.
And, well, maybe a bit of luck.
Of the swarm of reporters covering Silicon Valley's tech boom in October 1999, it was Smith whom Oracle Corp. CEO Larry Ellison handpicked to run his latest startup, The New Internet Computer Co. (NIC), based in San Francisco.
That's right, a journalist with no management experience to run his fledgling company.
At the time, Smith was fresh into a TV job co-hosting CNET's hour-long tech show on CNBC with Richard Hart. She was approached for the spot after a four-year stint as a tech expert for ABC shows including "Good Morning America" and "World News Tonight" with Peter Jennings.
Smith has that rare mix of being accessible, attractive, likable and knowledgeable about computers -- and her journalism career was on fire.
When Ellison asked her to dinner that fall, Smith already had co-authored two books, "Toolbook: Programming for Non-Programmers" and "101 Computer Answers You Need to Know." She had spent 11 years as an editor and writer for various computer magazines, writing the "Inside Silicon Valley" tech column for the Sunday Examiner Chronicle and hosting a radio show about computers.
When Ellison stunned her over dinner with his offer to maker her CEO of NIC, her career was at an unlikely turning point.
"He said, 'I'm convinced that executives make messes of things' and he didn't want to hire somebody who was already bureaucratic, you know, from a computer company," Smith recalls. "He said he wanted fresh, out-of-the-box ideas and that I knew everybody."
After two months of deliberation, Smith agreed to run NIC, a maker of bare-bones, Internet-only computers that sold for $199.
"I thought 'When am I going to get another opportunity like this?' I mean, Bill Gates has never called me and asked me to run a company for him," Smith jokes.
The 39-year-old is plain-spoken and friendly, with the humility of someone who is not humble but confident enough not to pretend she is just a clever writer.
Intelligent, charming and competitive is how mentor David Street describes Smith.
"I wouldn't call her over-the-top bubbly. She's friendly, she's warm, she's engaging," Street says. "If you have to name her greatest skill, it's engaging with people and getting positive results."
Street hired Smith in 1987 to be a writer for computer disk-drive maker Core International in Boca, Fla. At the time, Smith had been a crime reporter at The Boca Raton News for two years, but was looking to specialize in a beat that didn't already have a large pool of reporters. She had the chance to cover Microsoft Corp. for the newspaper and figured that if she could learn more about computers, an area not well-covered by the media at the time, she would boost her likelihood of being successful.
"I've always tried to identify something that's going to be big and then be a journalist or a commentator, or have a company around it," Smith explains.
She left the computer company after a year to work for PC Week, thanks to a brilliant stroke of luck. Smith had written a letter to the magazine -- on bright blue paper, as is the want of a 23-year-old -- asking for a job. The letter lay crumpled up in the trash can of PC Week's human relations' office when the editor noticed its bright color, pulled it from the trash and called her for a job.
Of course, luck had little to do with her success as a journalist for the next decade or so.
Smith says her CEO stint was a blast and "one of the most interesting times in my life."
Armed with $10 million from Ellison and a Rolodex, she launched the company and sold thousands of its machines. NIC got great media coverage ("I knew how to deal with the press because I knew what a good story was," Smith says) and the kind of access to large corporate partners that only non-reporters can dream of.
"I could easily call [Sun Microsystems Inc. CEO] Scott McNealy and set up a meeting to see how the NIC could work with the Sun servers," Smith says. "Whereas if I was a startup that didn't already know Scott, gosh, good luck meeting with Sun."
And, yes, Sun did end up doing a deal with NIC.
NIC folded in 2003, about a year after Smith left, having failed to make sales goals at a time when personal computers that offered more than Internet access became ubiquitous and cheap.
Smith was offered jobs as "vice president of this and that" at various Fortune 100 companies. But she returned to her passion for writing and enrolled in the Iowa Writer's Workshop. She wrote the non-fiction book "The Genomics Age," slated for publication in September, as well as a partly autobiographic novel.
Smith says a personal turning point was when her late mother was diagnosed with cancer in 1998. Her mother, who was part-gypsy, part-Serbian and raised in an Auschwitz gypsy concentration camp, became an epicurean and enjoyed fine wines, rich food and cigarettes. Her mother's illness prompted Smith to become vegetarian, start practicing meditation and run five miles every day, which she still does every morning.
Smith says her priorities shifted again from her career to being healthy and well-balanced when son, Eric, was born 14 months ago.
"Before I was all about achieving. É Now I think a lot about Eric and [whether] we can potty train him," Smith says buoyantly.
Smith may have re-prioritized, but she's still chasing the latest technology. Smith recently became president of Eye Games Inc., a San Francisco-based company that has developed games for the personal computer that put the physical actions of the player onto the screen. A small Web cam records the player's movements while sitting at their computer and beams it on-screen into a computerized basketball game, for example. So the image of the actual player acts like a cursor to shoot a hoop.
At a small San Francisco cafe, Smith began an Eye Games demonstration for the benefit of this non-gaming reporter. Her enthusiasm soon had the handful of coffee-drinkers in the place swarmed around her computer.
In no time, she was laughing and chatting with everyone.
Rhonda Ascierto is a Biz Ink reporter. You can reach her at rascierto@svbizink.com.
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Title/company: President/ Eye Games Inc.
Age: 39
Birthplace: Daytona Beach, Fla.
Residence: San Francisco
Education: Bachelor's degrees in chemistry and English, Florida State University, 1985
Family: Husband, Henry Schaefer, 41; son, Eric Schaefer, 1
What do you listen to on the way to work? KQED
What did you listen to 20 years ago: "Soul Mining" by The The
Favorite comfort food: Raw oats and milk
Most adventurous act: At 18, I was the first person to demonstrate parasailing in Florida. I went up and down the coast 100 miles, demonstrating to tourists what parasailing looked like and that it was safe. At the time, you had to be a strong swimmer, because parasails didn't land you on the beach -- you ended up 25 to 50 yards offshore.
Favorite meal: Be bim bop (Korean mixed vegetables with rice)
Favorite home cooked meal: Penne primavera
Three items we would always find in your refrigerator: Pellegrino, carrot juice and whole wheat bread
Three programmed radio stations in your car: KFOG, KQED, KCSM
Drink of choice: Sparkling water
Decaf lowfat latte or just a cup of Joe? Venti soy vanilla latte
Dream vacation: A month at Esalen, Big Sur
Movies or theater? Theater
Evening out or evening in? In
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