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Entrepreneur of the Year: Ping Fu

After covering a mile or two she sat down on a driftwood log and looked out to sea. Lost in her thoughts, she didn't see the man approach. "Why so pensive, young lady?" he asked. They struck up a conversation. The man, whose name was Len Sherman, turned out to own a start-up software design company. Ping told him she was a programmer. Sherman hired Ping to write code on a part-time basis.

As a result of this quintessentially Californian encounter, Ping hit her stride in software design. As she designed a piece, she thought constantly about the needs and aptitude of the user. Her codes followed an organic, logical flow, forming a kind of narrative, and Sherman's customers loved them. In return, by working part-time at the beach, Ping earned a six-figure annual income. Sherman would go surfing while Ping worked up at his office, sitting at a computer monitor in front of the picture window.

Ping earned her baccalaureate and set course on another degree, a doctorate in computer sciences. She wanted to work for Bell Labs in Illinois, and continue her studies at the University of Illinois, which housed the federally funded National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Sherman begged her to stay in California. How could she leave the San Diego beaches for the gray Midwest? The two of them had a great thing going--they were making money by the bucketful. When Ping said sorry, she had made up her mind, Sherman offered her a 5% stake in his company. Ping turned it down.

Sherman looked at her closely. He planned to sell his company eventually; from that 5% stake, Ping could become a millionaire. Did she fully understand what she was giving up?

She did; or at least she thought she did. (And, in fact, six months after she left California, Sherman sold the company.) Money itself was of little interest to Ping. Thus far in the U.S., money had accrued to her almost by its own accord. She wanted something else. Exactly what she could not name, but that was part of America too. Perhaps the greatest part.

Ping moved in 1986 to Illinois, where she worked for four years at Bell Labs while beginning work on her Ph.D. Then, in keeping with her plan, she moved to the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, or NCSA, and while there completed her doctorate. She immersed herself in the field of computer visualization, which was opening an exciting new playground on the border between science and art. Ping quickly demonstrated a gift for applications, for crystallizing arcane theory into a range of viable products. Among other projects, she helped design the software animation for the movie Terminator 2. She eventually took a full-time staff position at NCSA, a mecca for talented computer science students. One of them was Marc Andreessen, a tall, fair-haired sophomore whose disheveled appearance belied his fierce ambition.

She was Andreessen's boss as he developed the Mosaic Internet browser that blossomed into Netscape--she says she suggested that he work on a browser. Andreessen carried the browser away to Silicon Valley glory in 1993. The NCSA contended that it owned the rights to the work done in its laboratories, and sued Andreessen. After years of contentious litigation, NCSA came away with just $3 million from Netscape. Andreessen, of course, became a multimillionaire and appeared on the cover of Time.

Ping felt it was her destiny to create something of value. Why else would fate have commended her to such an unlikely pilgrimage?

The episode proved pivotal for Ping. Andreessen wasn't the computer scientist or software programmer that she was, but he possessed ruthless drive and laser-beam focus, and he had created a company--and an idea--of transformative value. Ping hardly wanted to become another Mark Andreessen, but she felt it was her destiny to create something of Netscape-like value. Why else would fate have commended her to such an unlikely pilgrimage?