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Issue Date: Feb. 17, 2002
Technology
Donna Auguste and Richard Charles
Interview: January 8, 2002
"When it comes to raising capital, the attribute that matters most is passion."
— Photo by Diane Huntress for USA WEEKEND
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Most Americans still imagine that a technology CEO will look more like Bill Gates than Angela Bassett. But Donna Auguste, 43, is changing that. Nine months ago, Freshwater Software, the Boulder, Colo., company Auguste started in 1996, was sold for $147 million in cash. Auguste walked away with a treasure trove of earnings and the passion to use technology to make a difference. It wasn't the first time Auguste turned heads in the industry. In the early '90s, she led an elite team of programmers at Apple in creating the Newton, a forerunner to today's ubiquitous Palm. In November, she launched Leave a Little Room, a philanthropic organization dedicated to global outreach, as well as LLR Gospel Music, an online radio station and Internet music store. Her protégé, 35-year-old Richard Charles, is following in her footsteps. In 2001, he formed the Math Learning Institute, a corporation based in Aurora, Colo., designed to give students of all colors the tools to succeed in an increasingly math-oriented world. They hooked up in Boulder to discuss why they click with computers.
Auguste: I grew up in Berkeley, Calif. Both my parents are from Louisiana, but we moved to Berkeley when I was really young. I had an opportunity to be around a lot of emerging technology and entrepreneurs who were taking technology and going in new directions with it. Silicon Valley took off during that time. I worked at Apple and some of the other start-up companies. It was a wonderful place to learn how to go from visionary idea to the reality of product — services that meet needs in a commercial marketplace. When I started Freshwater in 1996, all of that background blended into five years of tremendous e-commerce experience. That led to Leave A Little Room and LLR Music.
Charles: I was born in Trinidad, in the West Indies. But I grew up in Corona, Queens [N.Y.]. My early exposure to technology was purchasing a Commodore Vic-20 when I was a teenager.
Auguste: An oldie — oh, yeah!
Charles: I used to write programs for it, actually. I wrote this neat application, a crude version of Space Invaders, and just played with it all day. Did you have computers like the Vic-20 growing up? I bet they used punch cards.
Auguste: [Laughs.] We used abacuses.
Charles: Communities that don't have computers will be facing challenges. It's like mathematics. You have to interact with it. You have to do the problems. You have to touch and feel and experience computers. Coming home and sitting around the dinner table while Dad is talking about computers is like doctors and lawyers talking to their kids about anaesthesia and legal procedures. Terminology advances you. It's a big thing. The more contact you have with terminology, the more comfortable you become with it.
Auguste: I completely agree. Helping our young people become familiar with the nomenclature is key. [Once they're] comfortable, they can take their entrepreneurial ideas and turn it into a real business or invention or profession.
Charles: I formed the math institute to address the issues of math phobia that a lot of people grew up with. We're trying to reduce some of the challenges that people have, particularly students. One bit of data that's interesting is U.S. 12th-graders scored below the international average and are among the lowest of the 21 participating nations in mathematics. The U.S. outperformed only South Africa and Cyprus in mathematics. We have a crisis. Particularly since the advent of the Internet, we are dealing with an increasingly global economy. We have to find ways in which we can compete.
Auguste: Richard is doing amazing, innovative work for our young people in a way that I think is sustainable and can create a lot of passion in our young people around mathematics. Math is a great launching pad for lots of different interests — careers in mathematics, careers in science, careers in finance. [In regards to myself,] the concept of LLR gospel is to reach out to people and share music in a way that brings people together. It has a very global perspective. My focus is to use technology and an innovative approach to inspire people to share the blessings that God has given them.
Charles: My focus on community is no different from yours. I'm driven by the gifts that God has bestowed upon me. I say a prayer every morning asking for guidance so that I can use the gifts that God has given me to better the work. [Working in the field of technology,] you've got to have resilience, the ability to separate the products of your efforts from your personal decisions. If something you try out doesn't work, you don't take it personally and have that hinder your growth in any way.
Auguste: I've always made it a point to do lots of networking among people of color in any area that I'm working. Diversity is something I've fought for at every company. That's come from that background in community. People of color in technology environments and business environments — that flavor of diversity, those different perspectives and backgrounds in my work now with LLR Gospel Music has allowed us to reach out to a very diverse customer base. Our customers are all over the world. The cultures that our employees are part of flavors everything that we do at LLR Gospel Music and our interaction with our customers.
Charles: One of the challenges at Math Institute is selecting an excellent team, finding people with passion for mathematics. It was wonderful to have you as a role model at US West [a developer of multimedia technology, now known as Qwest]. I had the pleasure of being on a team you coached that was responsible for bringing broadband technology to the marketplace. One of the striking differences in that team was that you are committed to having fun. You strongly believe you can't be productive if you're not having fun. We had tremendous team-building activities. That team had a lot of members that went on to form their own companies.
Auguste: You have to keep the human element at the forefront. If folks are having fun and are enjoying working together as a team, you can get a lot done. The team you described at US West had tremendous results. We shipped our product on time, under budget, and with a much smaller team than we were originally budgeted to bring aboard. That was the case for me at Freshwater, that is the case at LLR Gospel Music, that's the case with the Math Learning Institute.
Charles: I would tell young people that perseverance is what it takes to succeed in this field. You have to be well-prepared. Too often, children are being denied opportunities because their math education isn't being addressed. We want to put that power back into the hands of children. It won't be because of a lack of math preparation that they make the decision not to get into the field of technology.
Auguste: When it comes to raising capital, the predominant attribute that matters is passion. Passion. Investors want to know if an entrepreneur is going to make a way out of no way, be resourceful, not give up. If you're passionate, you will make it work. You will not let your company fail. That's what they are looking for. It's not race or any set of attributes I've found investors are looking for. One way or another, it boils down to passion.
— Moderated by Veronica Chambers, author of the memoir "Mama's Girl"
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